The Life Aquatic: a box office flop that I loved
What's not to like about Bill Murray? Well i suppose if you are a producer in Hollywood you don't like that despite his star-power, this movie lost more than $ 20 million for the studio. However, like many hidden gems it has developed a cult following over the years and is now viewed far more favorably than when it was released.
The film was dedicated to Jacques Cousteau and if you know anything about Cousteau it becomes evident very early on that this is precisely what the film is attempting to mimic... although in a far more ridiculous sense.
The plot centers around Steve Zissou and his crew who have traveled the world documenting the world's oddities in and around the sea. The discoveries they make are surreal to the point where one reporter suggests they are fake (they obviously are fake, but that is the directing style of Wes Anderson - love it or hate it.) Their latest project is to hunt down and kill the ferocious Jaguar Shark, which killed Zissou's best friend and chief diver, Esteban.
While doing a press release about his upcoming journey he is approached by a young(er) pilot named Ned Plimpton, whose mother recently passed away and he believes that Steve Zissou is his father. Ned leaves his job as an airline pilot and also agrees to spend his inheritance on the Zissou project.
this film was released during a time when Owen Wilson was trying to separate himself from being just a comedy actor
To reveal other parts of the movie would ruin the plot but to be honest there really isn't much of one. There are multiple setbacks on their journey including being kidnapped by Filipino pirates and the film kind of relies on Bill Murray's dry humor to carry the storyline. In many ways it fails but just like any other cult classic, the movie somehow becomes better after a second or third viewing.
This movie can move slowly at times and I think that is why it was relatively universally panned when it was released in 2004. The star-studded lineup of Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Cate Blanchett, Jeff Goldblum, Anjelica Huston, and even William Dafoe (one of my personal favorites) wasn't enough to bring out the people to the cinemas and I guess this goes to show that just because you have an all-star lineup, doesn't necessarily mean the project is going to be a success.
I enjoyed it, but I think you need to appreciate Wes Anderson's style to really get on board with this one. Being familiar with Cousteau probably wouldn't hurt as well. Overall, i would say it is worth seeing, but certainly not legendary.
I love Bill Murray, maybe more than any other actor. Comedians who act, and how they act, is one of my obsessions.
I fulfilled a bucket list dream last month, when I saw Bill Murray's live show at the Royal Festival Hall in London, in which he read some Mark Twain, conducted a singalong with the audience of such classics as "It ain't necessarily so" and danced like a little girl around the stage, singing "I feel pretty."
Murray throws his audience off balance, by coming on aggressive, unsmiling and unfunny, challenging us to complain, then he suddenly gets wild and crazy, singing for and with us, joking around.
Murray's layered unstable deadpan unpredictability is why, I think, Wes Anderson has cast him in his last 8 films. Because Anderson never seeks to tell a dramatic story, or even to make us laugh out loud, but rather wants to keep us off balance, mournfully chuckling at life's absurdities.
Anderson is like a scientist looking at humanity as ants under a microscope. He makes us aware we are being told a story, refusing to let us feel the story, because he wants us to see we are pawns of fate, who, like Esteban, at the beginning of the movie, can suddenly die, and that the quests of our lives, such as seeking revenge against a shark, are all precarious and absurd.
I'm sure Jacques Cousteau himself would never have dreamed a filmmaker would one day treat the real death, of his son in an airplane accident, with such absurd deadpan lightness, and at such an emotional distance.
Every frame is flat, like the pages of a storybook, primary colors make scenes resemble painted comic book story panels, and nobody ever registers a real emotion.
Except, beneath those wild unpredictable glazed Bill Murray eyes, you occasionally get a glimpse of the human tragedy Wes Anderson is witnessing: this man with no son, living an absurd life, following absurd quests, desperately seeks human connection and affection in a phony father-son bond, that periodically suddenly becomes heartfelt ,somewhere behind those deadpan eyes.
That Anderson disguises real emotion, behind endless absurdity and unfunny cartoonish comedy, that is his secret weapon. If and when you suddenly see that real emotion, that is when you feel Anderson's movies are worthwhile.
But Anderson is such a mannered, acquired taste of a filmmaker, that not one of his films has grossed more than $60 million domestic. And I doubt they ever will.
But as long as Bill Murray sticks with Anderson, so will I. :)
wow! What a wonderful follow-up. You win for today. Great work pal!
Well, you're a diver so you appreciate aquatics better than i do, am a pool swimmer😄, anyway tell me is the Jaguar shark a real thing or just like how everything is this movie is fake that one too is fake? And is astounding how one can use all thier inheritance to support a single ridiculous project may even fail, this film is a comedy in my opinion.
Omg, now that the diver and the pool swimmer are talking about what life inside water is like, what am I going to do be because I'm neither a pool swimmer nor a diver... Lol
I'm scared of water as in........ Smile
i am relatively certain that the Jaguar shark is not real.
Haha relatively, alryt then
The life aquatic hmm! Great movie over all. You've already told a lot about it and I now know the whole film somehow. However some scenes are useless and make the movie go array from its original objective like being kidnapped by pirates as you mentioned. This surely mimics costeau life. Thanks a lot for sharing.
Grrreat film!
A really beautiful and wonderful film I will follow with sure Thank you my friend You are really special
I think with your review, the movie is trying to make comedy real to us.. Smile
Well, the storyline looks somehow much interesting and I'm sure, it would worth every single minutes spent watching it.
Well this movie really for enjoyments, and that's no matter its real or fake but I really enjoy it, well thanks for sharing
Hii... Gooddream
This Film is superb like your post.
Acting Is Superb done by All Actors.
This story is a lighthearted adventure comedy. I too am guilty of being one of those Wes Anderson fans who salivate over all the small details but while watching this I quickly detached myself from the director and his style and previous work and just let "The Life Aquatic" take me along. And that's what you have to do. It's different from his other stuff in that it's more plot driven. There are some wonderful characters but they have to deal more with outside complications than internal struggles. It is similar in tone and style to Robert Altman's "MAS*H," what with all the juggling of fighting and death (serious themes dealt with in an objective comedic manner). There's also some Fellini moments (it was mostly filmed at Cinecitta). I loved it. Don't go into this film as a biased hipster Wes Anderson fan, clean the slate and take it with an open mind. It's certainly sillier than Rushmore or Tenenbaums, but it's just as ambitious and exponentially courageous with shots and tone.