Release Date: December 10, 2004
Starring: Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Cate Blanchett, Anjelica Huston, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Michael Gambon
Directed by: Wes Anderson
Written by: Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach
Distributed by: Buena Vista Pictures
MPAA Rating: R (language, some drug use, violence, partial nudity)
In The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, the director, Wes Anderson, is stalling for time, doing a little dance while he comes up with his next big act. This film, his fourth, is not as good as his two best movies, The Royal Tenenbaums and Rushmore, but it offers a broad sample of his distinct style, the kind of thing you could pick out of a police lineup as a Wes Anderson movie, no questions asked. It is, variously, wryly funny, strikingly sad, and ultimately redeeming, exactly the offbeat movie you would expect from an inestimably unique filmmaker who sees all kinds of possibilities in the narrative film.
As in Rushmore, Anderson once again has Bill Murray as his star, playing the maverick undersea explorer and documentarian Steve Zissou with the deadpan gusto that Murray seems to save mostly for Anderson movies, uncorking it like a prize bottle of vintage champagne. As the movie begins, a jaguar shark -- a mythical creature that might not even be real -- eats Zissou’s longtime partner, whereupon Zissou concocts the idea for his next movie: He, along with his motley crew of seagoing misfits, will hunt down and kill the jaguar shark, regardless of the stipulation that if it exists it is probably a member of an endangered species.
The crew includes his estranged wife, Eleanor (Anjelica Huston), who used to be married to his rival, the pompous Alistair Hennessey (Jeff Goldblum); a pilot, Ned Plimpton (Owen Wilson), who might also be his son; and Jane Winslett-Richardson (Cate Blanchett), a journalist doing a cover story on Zissou for an oceanography magazine. Further in the wings are the various screwballs that tend to pop up in Anderson movies, including Zissou’s second-in-command, Klaus Daimler (Willem Dafoe, gamely sporting a German accent); his longtime financier, Oseary Drakoulias (Michael Gambon); and a bunch of interns who lurk as living props in the background of every scene.
All of the actors are in fine form, giving themselves up to Anderson’s brand of straight-faced humor and eagerly devouring the dialogue (Anderson co-wrote the script with Noah Baumbach), which is rough around the edges and cycles through moods like a nicotine addict chain-smoking Marlboros. A life-and-death scene in which Steve saves Ned from drowning by giving him mouth-to-mouth turns suddenly comic when Steve, having revived Ned, turns to his cameraman and asks if he got it, and what F-stop he used to shoot the scene (you have to understand that as Anderson is shooting The Life Aquatic, Zissou is also shooting his own movie). The talk consists almost entirely of throwaway dialogue, except that the term “throwaway” implies that some part of the movie is substantive, and you’re never really sure which part that is. In one scene, Steve is giving Ned a tour of his island base camp, and he points to a portrait of Alistair Hennessy, mentioning in passing that Alistair is a real asshole, just as you might say that, oh, by the way, Alistair is originally from Cleveland. Listening to Anderson dialogue is like looking at one of those M.C. Escher double-image optical illusions: You see one thing, and then, after you look at it for a while, you see something else. The longer you listen to Anderson’s choppy patter, the more you understand why it’s so funny.
One of the reasons is that, like Anderson’s previous movies, The Life Aquatic is really about nerdy, immature male characters who desperately want something -- usually a woman -- they will never have and who will not be happy with themselves until they come to accept what they are really supposed to have instead: a more lasting relationship along the familial, father-son axis. This setup is almost a bit too familiar here, since it is the third time Murray has futilely pined for a woman under Anderson’s watch (he was paired with Olivia Williams in Rushmore and Gwyneth Paltrow in Tenenbaums, and now Cate Blanchett here). But it is hard to dock Anderson points for this. Watching a socially dysfunctional adult like Steve Zissou make his clumsy, roundabout overtures to the serious reporter, Jane Winslett-Richardson, or come to terms with his earnest, long-lost son, Ned Plimpton, and watching both of them struggle to decide whether take him at face value is still funny, even if Anderson has previously taken this setup several times around the block.
It helps, to some degree, that Anderson is in full auteur mode, imposing his laconic subtitles on the action and delivering the story from his typical level of “meta” remove -- the way the camera recklessly pans and zooms to follow the action, as if it were a surprise to even Anderson, makes it seem like he’s making a movie about making the movie. But ultimately it winds up the same. If you’ve seen an Anderson movie before, then you know that everything before the final 20 minutes is just a setup, done with a sly wink and a subtle nudge; the end is where everything really happens. The characters accept their flaws, pay for their vices, reap their victories, tie off their loose ends, and ride off into the sunset, and there’s usually a little serious drama involved. It’s effective, but predictable, which is why The Life Aquatic is a step down for Anderson from his previous movies: It often feels like he’s taken his plot and character templates and simply spray-painted them onto a different surface. Luckily, he is a terribly innovative director, the kind of filmmaker who, even on his most average day, will do something new, unusual, and very much worth seeing.
-- Craig Roush (craigroush@hotmail.com)