Thoughts on “The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou”

When talking about “Bottle Rocket”, the cinematographic debut of the talented director and writer Wes Anderson, Martin Scorsese said: “Wes Anderson, at age thirty, has a very special kind of talent: he knows how to convey the simple joys and interactions between people so well and with such richness”, and rightfully so, for who has never felt at least a bit of pity towards one of the Whitman brothers, all of them drown in painkillers to deal with the sorrow, or towards Ash, the black sheep looking up to his negligent father? All the emotions, the thoughts of Anderson's characters are portrayed in such a subtle and natural way that they are more than just believable.
I think nowhere is this more blatantly truthful than in “The Life Aquatic”. Although i wouldn't say it's the best feature in his filmography, it certainly is my favorite amongst them all. In this film, Bill Murray incarnates Steve Zissou, a famous oceanographer and documentary maker (inspired by Jacques Cousteau) whose career is now dying. The plot is quite easy to follow: his best friend and colleague, Esteban Du Plantier, has been eaten by what Steve calls a “Jaguar Shark”, so for his next feature, he decides to hunt it down. One of the things that catch my attention, for example, is the unusual amount of characters that appear in it, and the surprising amount of time they have on screen and all the details we get from them, although the dialogue never feels unnatural or forced, another example is the design of the creatures, the names, etc, etc. But what makes this film really special to me is it´s tone. Indeed, it breathes this strange philosophy that makes Aki Kaurismaki films (another great cinematographer) so great, what “Channel Criswell” called “Optimistic Pessimism”. In this film, all characters are introduced at their lowest points, Steve Zissou just lost his best friend, he has almost no budget for a next film, this being a consequence of the decline of his prestige, his boat, the “Belafonte” is torn apart; Ned Plimpton, (played by Owen Wilson) lost her mother, who had killed herself due to the pain of a mortal disease; Jane, the periodist (played by Cate Blanchett), carries the baby of a man who´s married to another woman, and so on. The situations they go through, although quite hilarious, are tragic in the same time, for instance, they're attacked by Philippin pirates who steal the money they had left to produce their film, Ned dies in a helicopter crash, and as they face all these situations, they all also fight against their ghosts and their fears. They only finish the adventure out of luck.
This film feels like a blast of reality, it´s not a story about youth and rebellion, like “Moonrise Kingdom” or “Rushmore”, it's not about finding oneself or finding a purpose like “The Darjeeling Ltd.” or “The Grand Budapest Hotel”. It's a film about incompetent and selfish people and the consequences of their actions, but the best of it all, is that you still care about them, even knowing how they are. When Steve cries in the submarine, you understand his sadness, the pain of losing a friend, the death of his son, although he was such an idiot in so many occasions. And when the adventure finally comes to an end, you feel that exhaustment, the pointless of it all. It's a movie filled with emotions, but instead of doing like Kaurismaki, who rejects drama, Anderson seems to embrace it, and uses it like a sort of catharsis (the end is literally a catharsis).
The ending has nothing to do with those emotions though. Not all conflicts are solved, but nevertheless, it sort of feels like it.
I always thought this movie was a sort of black sheep within Wes Anderson's films, the closest it has in tone and story is “The Royal Tenenbaums”. Even so, i believe it outstands precisely for that reason, and i couldn't be more glad about it…
