Thursday, October 18, 2012

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

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The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

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I think if everyone would stop referring to the Wes Anderson movies as comedies we would all be better off. "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" is not about making the audience laugh. Yes, there are times you will laugh, but there are also times you will cringe, and there are other moments for just about everything else. What kind of movie is it? It really isn't something that can be given a single label. Yes, there are all kinds of jokes, but aren't they in the service of something more than simple laughs? Hearing David Bowie songs in Portuguese with an acoustic guitar is not only funny, it is kind of beautiful.

A simple joke is the name of Zissou's ship. The Belefonte is clearly a play on Cousteau's Calypso as are the crew's red knit caps. However, some of the humor is quite tough. Think of the scene with Jeff Goldblum's Alistair Hennessy playing cards with his pirate captors as Steve Zissou comes in the room. What follows is funny, but grim at the same time. Then there is the weird way the inside of the boat is portrayed in a cutaway set that looks fake and is meant to look fake. Notice that the science room is the smallest room on this research vessel. The Sauna is much bigger and all the rooms given over to film production constitute most of the ship.

This movie has a lot of fun with the artificial in documentaries and films. Even the scenes of creatures of the sea are often CGI creations that don't even try to look real. Heck, even the colors in the Zissou documentaries are supersaturated and look like they were done in different colors of ink rather than the ocean. How real is life when you are more concerned about getting everything shot with the right sound rather than living it? And how legitimate can a documentary be when it is cobbled together from a lot of staged shots and hosted by someone who really doesn't have a clue about the science behind what is being filmed?

All of the lead actors are terrific and Bill Murray leads the way as the weary and fading Steve Zissou. Everyone involved with Zissou has their own downward arc. Even the equipment is old and barely works. Tired helicopters are dangerous things.

Does the movie work? Maybe not. However, I find so much to watch and enjoy in each scene - even just the actions of the non-speaking characters - that I really enjoyed this movie. If you want to see something strangely beautiful, that plays with all kinds of notions of what is real and what is fake and has a lot of fun along the way, this might be something you would enjoy, although it is not for children.

I guess the kind of send up it is, even of Moby Dick, can be captured by then end title that expresses "gratitude to the Jacques Cousteau Society even though they had nothing to do with the making of the film." I like this kind of thing. Maybe you do to.



The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

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