Mark Reviews Movies: FATHOM (2021)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 24, 2021

As Fathom proceeds, it becomes pretty clear that the filmmakers' goals were undercut by the unavoidable. The documentary, directed by Drew Xanthopoulos, follows two scientists, one from the United States and the other from Scotland, as they prepare to research humpback whales in, respectively, Alaska and French Polynesia. Technology and the whales don't cooperate with the plan.

Both scientists, Drs. Michelle Fourney and Ellen Garland, are fascinated with the songs of the humpback. Both are convinced that the singing is a complex form of communication, developed over tens of millions of years of evolution—well, well before humans evolved to communicate.

Fourney sets out on weeks-long expedition to attempt to talk to a whale, using the recording of a "whup" sound generated by the animal. She believes the noise is how humpback whales greet each other. Meanwhile, Garland has been creating a map of colonies of humpbacks across the globe. She hopes to determine how these songs travel between groups and where the "end" of that map is.

The information and its dissection are fascinating, and there's a real sense of the research, passion, and theories of each scientist before either starts her journey. Once those expeditions begin, Xanthopoulos notably stays with the human subjects, making certain that we understand the process, challenges, and goals of each scientist's project. There's the wonder of it, too, especially when Fourney simply turns to the camera with a look of frozen awe, after a humpback breeches the surface only a few yards from her boat.

Trouble strikes. For Fourney, the motor of her boat starts leaking fuel, stranding her and her team on the shore. For Garland, the problem isn't something that can be repaired or replaced. The whales in her research area simply aren't singing. All of their aims are in jeopardy, and as a result, the director's are, too.

All of the early scientific setup and theorizing, then, feels as if it belongs to a different narrative, since most of Fathom eventually becomes about the two scientists' personal lives and downtime. Their conversations and monologues—about feeling more at home here or missing home, about hopes for a future family or the difficulties of being away from one, about perceptions and struggles of being a woman in a scientific field—are intriguing, but the established mysteries of the humpback and its song end up bypassed.

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