The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
With Anderson it’s easy; you can get on his case for supposed insincerity and ironic detachment, for seemingly favoring set design over character development. It’s not uncommon for well-known directors to get knocked down a notch or two if they’ve made a string of well-received films and then try to do something totally different (witness what happened with Steven Soderbergh’s remake of Solaris: It was a fine film, mysterious and filled with excellent performances, but after the success of Traffic and Erin Brockovich, it was seen as too cerebral and too odd).
Like Quentin Tarantino, Anderson is a director that assembles his films from many sources, but because of his personal aesthetic, the parts are assembled into something completely different, beyond mere homage. In their respective outlines, Rushmore is indebted to The Graduate, and The Royal Tennenbaums borrows from The Magnificent Ambersons and Louis Malle’s The Fire Within. The Life Aquatic takes Jacques Cousteau’s films of undersea exploration as its obvious starting point. But like Anderson’s previous work, the tone is vastly different from the influence, to the point where a viewer could imagine the story being a creation of Anderson’s alone.
Each of those films involve characters that seem to stand outside obvious trends and time periods; although they are ostensibly set in the present, there are the trappings of the past, from the songs on their soundtracks to the general lack of discussion of anything topical. The set design is always meticulous, like a dollhouse.
Anderson is working from a very childlike place, in which people may grow up, they may achieve great things, but they still retain many of the juvenile impulses that have always driven them. Zissou may have been a hero to many young people, but in many ways he’s as much of a kid (or at least as immature) as they are.
The plot of The Life Aquatic involves Zissou’s mission to kill the rare and possibly endangered jaguar shark who devoured his partner on camera. Zissou is an ocean explorer in the Jacques Cousteau mode, and it’s quickly evident that his last few films have been greeted with an increasing lack of enthusiasm, if not disdain. He has surrounded himself with a crew that includes a faithful sidekick (Willem Dafoe, in a poignantly hilarious role), a singer who covers David Bowie songs in Portuguese (Seu Jorge), a magazine reporter who admires Zissou but is definitely not writing a puff piece (Cate Blanchett) and a longtime fan who may or may not be his illegitimate son (Owen Wilson). They pile into the Belafonte, a craft with everything from an editing room to a recording studio that appears to have been in need of serious repairs for decades. A better funded, infinitely smarmier ocean explorer (Jeff Goldblum) has sucked up much of Zissou’s funding, and has even stolen his wife (a perfectly disdainful but somehow caring Anjelica Huston).
The Life Aquatic is a child’s adventure, undertaken by people who are too old, and know they are too old, for such excursions. When pirates who kidnap the bond company employee hired to oversee the production of Zissou’s film, the crewmembers undertake a rescue mission, and end up saving Goldblum as well. Throughout the rescue, there is a notable lack of danger, as if these were children playing in the neighborhood; perhaps Zissou is so hopeless he doesn’t care what happens, and is merely going along with the rescue out of a sense that he must act heroic, being the leader and all.
Bill Murray is in virtually every scene in the film, and he has perfected the line between comedy and tragedy that works so well with Anderson’s aesthetic. Even as his Zissou is flattered and caring toward his “son’s” presence, he is still too proud and too arrogant not to admonish him for making a good point in front of a magazine reporter; he doesn’t want anyone else getting the good lines. Yet the look on his face when he is watching his partner being eaten onscreen is priceless: He’s also on the way down, and he knows it.
But it’s the mixture of irony, comedy and tragedy that is pervasive throughout Anderson’s dialogue that can leave some viewers absolutely cold. Indeed, as much as I found to admire, I am not sure that The Life Aquatic is altogether a success. When I was watching the film in the theater, a strange thing was happening: people were laughing when they thought they were supposed to be laughing, even in moments I found wrenching. Anderson is clearly following his own muse, and it’s a potent one, but that doesn’t mean everyone is on his wavelength.
Still, there are moments of real majesty. There is a scene at the very end of the film, in which the crew is descending to the bottom of the ocean in a cramped yellow submarine. As the crewmembers look out the windows, they are greeted by strange and beautiful sea life, and their faces light up. And then, in the dark recesses they finally see the gigantic, illuminated jaguar shark. Zissou’s face breaks through his stoned haze, and he realizes that his dreams are not lost. He’s the kid who has just seen the most amazing thing.
