Films > Film Reviews

The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou

Cinema City

02/03/18

As part of the run-up to Wes Anderson’s latest, Isle of Dogs, Cinema City are staging an I <3 Wes Anderson season: a retrospective on the director spanning his entire filmography. Here, I review his 2004 effort, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou .

What’s Wes Anderson’s greatest film? For some, it’s his earlier efforts, the giddy heights of his family-focused The Royal Tenenbaums or the endearing high-school romp, Rushmore . For many others, Anderson has aged like a fine wine, and his ode to innocence Moonrise Kingdom or his multi-layered nostalgia-trip The Grand Budapest Hotel does the trick.

Caught stranded in the middle was a phase of Anderson’s career where critics were less sure of the man’s talents; a period of time where the man almost became a parody of himself. But while The Darjeeling Limited was one of his weaker entries, for my money, The Life Aquatic is the best film he’s ever made.

It follows the plight of the budget-Cousteau ocean explorer Steve Zissou (Bill Murray), who witnesses the death of one of his closest friends by jaguar shark (chewed, not swallowed whole). Spurred on by this event, he seeks revenge, and his ragtag group of red-beanied, pastel-blue-coated adventurers (along with several unpaid interns) are more than willing to join in the fun.

Muddying waters (if you pardon the pun) is Owen Wilson’s Ned Plimpton, a Kentucky air pilot who joins the troup after revealing that he may or may not be Zissou’s son. Along with Cate Blanchett’s journalist Jane, the trio form a love-triangle that threatens to override the mission.

The mission, may I remind you, is to use dynamite to blow up a jaguar shark, a creature that remains elusive in our real world. So why something so fantastical? Well, The Life Aquatic is a film that finally finds a home for Anderson’s over quirkiness: all the bells and whistles (and stop-motion sea critters) point to the fact that what you’re seeing is fake. Coupled with a farcical, nonsensical plot (fit with pirate rescue missions and shootouts), and it’s easy to see why Zissou’s on-screen dissenters slander his tacky documentary films as ‘fake’.

But The Life Aquatic ’s biggest argument is this: it may not be real, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t real . For this Anderson’s most mature, contemplative feature yet, spruced up with a deliberately untidy father-son dynamic and one of the most cathartic, blisteringly powerful final sequences put to screen. I won’t give it away, but one line - so impenetrable yet somehow the perfect encapsulation of Life Aquatic ’s overarching message - is Anderson’s most extraordinary feat of filmmaking.

As far as depth is concerned, Life Aquatic is a bottomless ocean; there’s insight into studio productions, a philosophical musing on changing times, and a melancholy transition from the old-fashioned gizmos of Zissou’s stubborn ship (detailed to us in a terrific dollhouse-like scene) and his arch-rival’s (Jeff Goldblum) hi-tech wizz and bangs, complete with sleek furnishings and model sailors.
And it helps that Life Aquatic is really, really funny too; Willem Dafoe’s Klaus, a German sailor who sees Zissou as a paternal figure and doesn’t want Ned getting in the way, is delightful comic relief, while glib remarks - ‘What would be the scientific purpose of killing it?’ ‘Revenge.’ - flood the film with quickfire humour. There’s not a comedic note out of place - save for a strange final line from Blanchett.

Backed up by various Portuguese renditions of Bowie songs, interspersed with deliberately bygone synth melodies, Life Aquatic is easy on the ears - though perhaps not so much on the eyes. There’s a tangiblity to Anderson’s world here - shot on actual ships and sent to the high seas, this is a world that feels lived in, a far and welcome stray from the perfectionist delights of, say, The Grand Budapest Hotel .

There’s a grimy, well-worn (though staunchly symmetrical) aesthetic to juxtapose the unlikely narrative, blurring the lines further between what’s real and what’s not. In the end, though, what does it matter? For all of Life Aquatic’ s clear fabrications, this is Anderson’s most moving, lifelike picture yet, a ship of emotions that ventures out into the open sea.

10/10