After the Bite
We humans are an extremely arrogant race, don’t you think? The amount of space we occupy, the destruction we willingly cause, the cohabitants we ignore we are the loudest tenants of this planet which makes us feel like we own it and that all other species should act accordingly. “After the Bite,” a riveting new documentary about one Cape Cod town’s discussion on what humans can do to protect themselves from a great white shark surge, brings awareness to this fact. Director Ivy Meeropol (“Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn”) creates a powerful clash between perspectives human and animal that is much more entertaining and enlightening than Shark Week.
While the themes in “After the Bite” are as old as time spent on Earth, it centers them around a 2018 tragedy: a young man named Arthur Medici was attacked and killed by a shark off a beach in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. The attack was not an anomaly great white sharks had been seen closer to those beaches in recent years.
But it prompted various responses. Some wanted to learn how to live with them better, like scientists who tag sharks and can track their movement. Others considered where guilt could be placed: bad infrastructure; an expanding seal population mixing with human swimmers; and so forth.
These head butting viewpoints are not pushed by Meeropol’s film into more tension or given much plot to chew on. But its contemplative nature is still interesting as it looks at many entities feeling this issue viscerally and being part of an ecosystem that does not put human safety first. Suzy, head lifeguard, tells us about her nightmare involving a shark attack; John, father and Wellfleet resident, talks about not letting his surfer daughter go in the water after Arthur died and tells a town hall meeting that humans are not being protected enough. “After the Bite” serves up food for thought about an issue which it magnifies and treats to many different POVs.
It’s through Meeropol’s following-around footage as much as interviews riding in Suzy’s car to work; sitting on a boat with some fishermen who are venting about how global warming has changed the fishing scene, for both sharks and their livelihoods. We even get a seal’s POV as a fisherman hawks chum into the blue; the camera is thrashed about, bumped by leathery noses and whiskers. (Meeropol’s film takes a radical position it works to treat animals as peers.) One after another, “After the Bite” takes different players in this conundrum and puts a microscope on them, zooming in on this terror-polarized community.
There are moments when “After the Bite” gives more information about sharks than “Jaws,” and in these moments, Meeropol and co. do create a thrilling moment of their own later on. A great white nemesis is finally shown, up close, nibbling on a huge whale carcass; though this shark is massive and scary as it undulates past boats (and one freaked out guy named Noah who’s in a tank and gets real up close) it also inspires awe. The captured moment is about as natural as can be but with Meeropol’s work’s added context, it’s also bizarre and jarring.
Meeropol’s editing bounces around between many different tones, but they enrich each other it shows how this beach culture can create joy (like in a shark-themed burlesque in nearby Provincetown) just as much fear, evident when Suzy and her crew think they see a fin in the water. “After the Bite” doesn’t just capture a problem though; like any good documentary its goal is to show that this place is alive because it has problems.
It becomes clear over the course of “After the Bite” that everyone interviewed for this documentary has been thinking about sharks for years now not only talking about them, but dreaming about them too. Perhaps most memorably from surfer Dana who runs the beach parking lot gate with no shoes on and jokes with drivers-by until he can partake in the shark-scattered waters: “Humankind must learn humility in the face of nature,” he casually states before paddling away from the beach to surf without any manmade entitlements for his safety.
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