THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU 2004
56%
Directed by Wes Anderson
Written by Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach
Starring Bill Murray, Anjelica Huston, Owen Wilson, Willem Dafoe, Cate Blanchett, Jeff Goldblum
Synopsis
A down-on-his-luck celebrity oceanographer and his ragtag crew try to hunt down the “jaguar shark” that killed one of their own for a comeback documentary.
Why We Love It
Just how much Wes Anderson is too much Wes Anderson? That’s the question critics grappled with when the writer-director’s fourth feature arrived at theaters. A paean to one of his childhood heroes, Jacques Cousteau, Life Aquatic is a feast of Andersonian flourishes, with intoxicating music-fueled sequences, scrupulous set designs, coordinated costumes, fanciful shots, and just about everything else in the Wes World bag of tricks. It’s Wes Anderson, full throttle—which, for a film that tackles death, grief, fatherhood, failure, and other Big Dramatic Issues, came off to some as disingenuous or, to invoke the one-word slam often thrown at the director, “quirky.” And to be fair, Aquatic can be cartoonish (literally, with animated candy-colored sea creatures like the appropriately dubbed crayon ponyfish), and the mishmash of dry humor, adventure, dramatic swells, and other tonal shifts is enough to unsteady any story.
So it’s not a fully formed, tidy opus like Rushmore or a profile-raising ensemble picture like The Royal Tenenbaums, or a shaggy, endearing comedy like Bottle Rocket. For all its meticulousness, Anderson’s fourth time around on the big screen is a structurally messier affair—but a really fun one. Uneven? Sure. Boring? Never. This is Anderson the errant artist making a big-budget movie in exotic locales with crazy gadgets and shootout sequences and a giant friggin’ neon shark because he now has the clout to do so—and strikingly original ways to do so. Steve Zissou’s introduction of his submarine, the Belafonte, is marvelous, tracking through the curious ship’s nooks and crannies, creating an otherworld brimming with imagination. (Also marvelous: the boat was actually cut in half to make this happen.) The rescue-operation scene, too, keenly balances absurdity with honest-to-god fun bursts of action. The eye candy on display throughout is its own sort of achievement.
The Life Aquatic is more than mere visual bliss, though. Bill Murray, as the stoner semi-savant of a captain, dryly cranks out chuckle-worthy lines like “You know, cubbie’s kind of a sucker-maker, but she’s got some moves,” referring to Cate Blanchett’s character, a journalist once obsessed with Zissou who’s writing a cover story on him. (She’s great, by the way.) And smaller roles equally shine, particularly Willem Dafoe as a wounded-puppy-dog of a shipmate and Jeff Goldblum as Zissou’s dapper competitor. The father-son story between Zissou and Ned (Owen Wilson) runs a little thin, its drama feeling a bit unearned and forced. But this is a seafaring, rock ’n’ roll rollercoaster of a film, sountracked to Seu Jorge’s kickass Portuguese covers of Bowie. Who can’t get on board with that?