409 - The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, United States, 2004. Dir. Wes Anderson.

Tuesday, February 12, 2018

409 - The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, United States, 2004.  Dir. Wes Anderson.

Steve Zissou is a modern-day Ahab.

Well, sort of.

But rather than pursuing a great white whale, he seeks retribution against a Jaguar Shark.

Zissou is an underwater filmmaker.  A fictional Jacques Cousteau.  On his last voyage he lost his friend and chief diver Esteban du Plantier (Seymour Cassel).  Esteban was eaten (not bitten), chewed (not swallowed whole), by a Jaguar Shark, and Zissou determines to focus his next film, devoting his next voyage, on getting back at the shark.

He sits on the stage of a grand Italian theater and answers questions asked in multiple languages about his last film--the one on which his chief diver died--and his next film--the one on which he seeks to balance the scales.

Why do you want to go back?

Revenge.

Steve's wife Eleanor is threatening to leave him.  He wants her to stay.

A man named Ned Plimpton appears claiming to be his son.  Steve believes him and lets him come on board.

A pregnant journalist named Jane comes to interview him.  He expects it to be a puff piece, but her questions seem a bit more penetrating.  He makes her cry.

Apparently, his fans have been leaving him, and his career is not what it once was.  He was unaware of this development.  He is unconcerned.

Let the voyage of the Belafonte begin.

Because the film is a film within a film, the film moves back and forth between the real ship and the ship built in the studio.  The studio ship is cut in half and shown in cross-section.  On a stage.  As in an auditorium.  Live theater.

Life Aquatic is an ensemble film with a cast of stars.  Bill Murray.  Owen Wilson.  Cate Blanchett.  Anjelica Huston.  William Dafoe.  Jeff Goldblum.  Michael Gambon.  Noah Taylor.  Bud Cort.  Seymour Cassel.  And a debut performance by a young Matthew Gray Gubler.  Who is now approaching his 300th episode of Criminal Minds.

It is another display of the visual style that makes Wes Anderson Wes Anderson.

It is his first film to write without Owen Wilson, whose acting career is now taking off like a moon rocket.  Anderson co-writes this film with Noah Baumbach before going on to co-write future films with Roman Coppola.

Some people did not like it.  They think he jumped the shark.  It lost money.

But it fits neatly in his body of work.  And it looks as though it was a lot of fun to make.