The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is Wes Anderson's fourth feature, and continues his appraisal of the lives of gentle misanthropes and largely harmless eccentrics. Another thing that continues is my general dislike of everything the man produces. Normally I wouldn't give this a second thought and would just either pass on seeing his films or dismiss them outright after viewing, but three things prevent me from doing so. These are, in no particular order,

Anderson's obvious and skillful attention to detail and the love and care he puts into every aspect of his films
The almost unanimous praise from both critics and cinephiles that accompany every release
My wife loves his films, and I'd rather watch them with her than watch something starring Vin Diesel or Ben Stiller

Reflecting on the above list, I suppose they are in a particular order, since if it weren't for the first reason I probably wouldn't be writing this. And this is the biggest problem I have with Wes Anderson's films - they are undeniably well-written, well-acted, well-crafted works, featuring hordes of talented actors working out of love for the film medium, and not just for a fat paycheck. And in spite of that, they leave me either annoyed or bored to tears. And the problem keeps getting worse. I'd much prefer to watch Bottle Rocket or Rushmore than The Royal Tenenbaums or The Life Aquatic.

The title character of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, played by Anderson regular Bill Murray, is a down-and-out oceanographer whose last mission ended tragically with the death of his best friend, Esteban. Zissou, much like his real life inspiration Jacques Cousteau, is as much a celebrity and filmmaker as he is a scientist, except in Cousteau's case 'real' science seems to be involved. In Zissou's case.. maybe not. (More about this aspect later.)

Zissou has surrounded himself with an assemblage of eccentic associates, including his wife ("the brains behind Team Zissou"), played by Angelica Huston in her now standard 'ice queen' mode, Willem Dafoe, combining his Emit Flesti role from Faraway, So Close! with Peter Stormare's nihilist from The Big Lebowski, as Zissou sycophant Klaus Daimler, and Owen Wilson as Zissou's alleged illegitimate son, Ned Plimpton. As portrayed by Bill Murray in his late-career mode, Zissou isn't a particularly likable character, he's a self-centered hack who uses people, callously ignores others' feelings, and isn't above grand theft and larceny to achieve success. As a 'scientist' he's a joke, commenting at one point that his wife has to accompany Team Zissou on their journeys, because only she "knows the Latin names" for the aquatic life they encounter. None of his crew are any more knowledgable about marine life, either. It's something of a boast that they are all former cooks and mechanics.

Given the above information, I have a disquieting interpretation of the film - Anderson is Zissou. Zissou isn't much interested in his putative field, he's more interested in the films his crew makes than in what the films are about (there are probably more film techs on the crew than divers, and one suspects most if not all of the real oceanographic work is done by the many interchangable interns on deck.) He's constantly making comments about "f-stops", "two-shots", and "pushing the negative", but rarely makes more than an offhand comment about the actual fish. Likewise, at ths point in his career Anderson has become a master at the craft of directing - the film uses what could be a dizzying array of handheld shots, dollies, cranes, zooms, etc., but never feels unnatural because the director knows just how to use them in context to extract the maximum humor and emotion from his story. But I got the feeling the entire time that the story was ultimately shallow and hollow, about people about whom I couldn't be bothered to care.

OK, it's not that bad. As I said before, there's a lot to like about the film, particularly the performances of Cate Blanchett as a reporter facing the prospect of single motherhood, and Wilson, her would-be suitor. And in all objectivity, the film would be worth seeing just for the performance of Seu Jorge as Pelé dos Santos, a crew member whose sole function seems to be that of serenading the crew with Portuguese versions of David Bowie classics. The character's name is yet another in-joke and testament to Anderson's attention to detail - soccer great Pele's entire Brasilian career was spent at the club Santos. In the end, maybe it's just this amount of love and care that keeps me returning to Wes Anderson's bizarre little world, against my better judgement. And maybe that's not really so bad after all.