by A. Beatty McDonald

Wes Anderson’s latest film, “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou,” continues Anderson’s frenetic style and exploration of redemption, maturation, and aging. 

            The film opens at a screening of Zissou’s latest documentary, “Adventure Number 12.  ‘The Jaguar Shark’ (Part One)”.  Steve Zissou, an obvious Cousteau knock-off underplayed beautifully by Bill Murray, is an oceanographer in a rut.  He has been veering off course for a decade and losing his loved ones on the way.  Anderson’s narrative trick is subtle; the documentary is shown to the crowd and introduces the film’s main characters and the crew of Zissou’s boat, The Belafonte;  there is Eleanor (Anjelica Huston), Zissou’s wife and sextant in business,  Klaus Daimler (Willem Dafoe), the starved-for-Steve’s-attention engineer,  Pele des Santos (Seu Jorge), the ship’s safety expert and film’s minstrel whose renditions of David Bowie’s songs in Portuguese serve as beautiful segues, and Esteban du Plantier (Seymour Cassel), Zissou’s partner and best friend whose death by the jaguar shark brings the documentary to an end. 

            The lights come up, Zissou takes a Q&A and vows to kill the shark.  Eventually two more main characters are introduced; Ned Plimpton (Owen Wilson), Zissou’s improbable long lost son, and Jane Winslett-Richardson (Cate Blanchett), a pregnant, un-wed reporter, both of whom have worshipped Steve Zissou from an early age and from afar.  Both Ned and Jane join Zissou’s quest to slay the shark, and so the adventure begins.

            From here, the metaphors take over and begin to shape the story.  Zissou is on a journey to exact revenge on a shark that might or might not exist.  Ned has left a solid life in Kentucky in order to acquaint himself with Zissou, who may or may not be his father.  Jane is attempting to get a cover story of Zissou and in doing so, solidify her childhood idolatry of him.  Zissou’s journey is the deepest. 

            Esteban’s role in the film is so limited that his character is essentially unimportant. But his death is symbolic of an internal movement in Zissou, one that requires Zissou to explore uncharted waters and dive deep into the ocean after the shark.   And so Zissou plumbs the depths in his sub “Deep Search” (renamed from Jaqueline, Zissou’s first unrequited love), in search of what he’s lost, be it love, vitality, creativity, or friends. 

            The film becomes a little plot/narrative laden in the second half but Anderson’s style and wit keep it moving along until the climax.  There are many quietly hilarious moments in the film as well as hilariously sad moments.  The image of Alistair Hennessy (Jeff Goldblum), Zissou’s chief rival, running through the rain and bleeding from a gun-shot wound while wearing a t-shirt that reads “I’m a Pepper” is pretty fantastic. 

            Zissou squashes Ned’s hopes of a father-son moment in a beautiful scene underwater.  The crew is speaking through scuba helmets on intercom, and Ned asks Steve if he can call him Dad.  Zissou thinks for a moment and says  “No, you can call me Steve Z.  It sounds better”.  It is a quick jab at Hollywood’s superficiality symbolized by Zissou’s obsession with style over substance.

            What makes Anderson a great filmmaker though, is his ability to distill his preceding scenes and all the emotions they entail into a long sequential climax or as in the past, one moment.  In “The Royal Tenenbaums” the moment came when Chas declares to Royal that he has had a bad year, in “Rushmore” it came in the final image of Max and Ms. Cross dancing to The Faces.

            In “The Life Aquatic” Anderson sustains his longest moment yet, and while I do not want to give away too much, it ends with Zissou, surrounded by his crew, facing the glorious shark. 

            On Zissou’s face, you can see all the fear, regret and self-loathing of a man who has burned all his bridges and is looking at that which burned them.  The shark does not represent the bad in us, but the good that we leave behind.  Sigur Ros rises on the soundtrack, and Zissou stares at it with tears in his eyes and asks, “I wonder if it remembers me?”