Life Aquatic

So I reacquainted myself with Steve Zissou last night–Kris hadn’t seen the film. I had, and felt positive but less enthusiastic … it felt that first time through a bit scattered, familiar in tone and some of its technical and thematic peccadilloes, but somehow less cohesive than my favorite Wes Anderson films. I think it’s worth re-assessing, however. I found myself struck by the expanded range and nuance of Anderson’s style and concerns, and I was even more thunderstruck by the emotional wallop of the last scene.

First, that nuance claim: Anderson has always seemed a virtuoso at establishing a kind of emotional continuity across seemingly disparate elements (a disjunction of soundtrack and scene, a collision of jarring tones, a found continuity between things that don’t seem temporally or thematically cohesive). For instance, the opening of Rushmore sutures together Bill Murray’s point of view with Jason Schwartzmann’s, as we see Murray’s scribbled speech and Schwartzman’s scribbled effusive response; jump past their formal introduction (“He’s the worst student we’ve ever had”) to the title sequence’s thrilling yearbook of Max’s activities set to “Making Time”. I find myself laughing at Max, feeling sorry for him, seeing the echoes of that kid in Murray’s older sad sack, picking up an underlying concern to seize the day but with an absurd disregard for the import of what’s being seized (through beekeeping, go karts, fencing) which resonates throughout the film’s concerns with death and romance. There’s always just a hell of a lot going on–and it’s not just composition, ‘though Anderson’s detractors fault him for fussy direction when I’d praise the elaborate architectures of his emotional and narrative structures as well.
But there are flashes of spare dialogue in Aquatic which cover just as much ground in three, four sentences. Cate Blanchett, post-pirate attack, has a funny one-sided chat with her editor (and former lover/father-of-her-unborn-child) that starts out mundane (agree with the edits of the article she’s writing about Zissou), flips into the film’s plotted nonsense (we were just attacked by pirates), and then — with a flick of eyes and a slight shift in tone — conveys the sadness and fear evoked by the attack but underlying her own pregnant situation and the atmosphere of loss pervading the Belafonte’s current mission, and… I could keep going–you notice a stray line and an oddly-pitched delivery thereof, pull on what seems like a stray thread and suddenly you’re pondering the deep weave of the film’s concerns.

Second, what amazed me this go-round: All of Anderson’s films have seemed to be about not wanting to grow up. But not in some callow fashion, not simply like … well, every male protagonist in almost every American fiction of the last 100 years. Instead, Anderson’s characters seem to fear growing up because they fear death; the films have usually hinged on characters grappling with some deeper, existential reason for regression–surrounded or at least affected by deaths of those they love, they want to maintain the selfish control of the child, stick to the strange meaningless obessions of the young, ignore the blatant irrationality of their pursuits. (Anderson’s been accused of all this himself.)
Steve Zissou seems another version of the form, but I think there are subtleties of iteration–in the writing and plotting, but especially in Murray’s performance–that suggest a shift. (Or maybe just shift how I would read all of Anderson’s films now.) Zissou loses his best friend at film’s opening, but he also loses his son (or maybe son) at film’s end; Anderson’s characters often start out running from (someone else’s) mortality, but by most of his films’ ends they “recover” by giving up some of their selfishness and connecting with others’ needs–they don’t so much accept death as escape it, comically, in a celebratory community. (Max gives up on the teacher, the teacher gives up on mourning her dead husband, and everyone dances together.) Zissou’s character arc seems less about an acceptance of growing up, or about escaping the limits of the self in a community, or even an acceptance of mortality — it’s about the pervasiveness of loss. What Zissou accepts at the end is that everything is going away, dying, disappearing. He doesn’t find some greater outlet or the solace of connections with others. Zissou is still wishing he could be eleven-and-a-half (the best age ever), but he breaks down when he sees the great silly-looking jaguar shark outside the sub, wondering if “[the shark] remembers me”…. And even though everyone on the sub puts their hands on his shoulders, you know (from the composition) that he’s still all alone there, and that he knows the shark doesn’t remember, or care, or know anything. Afterward, Zissou doesn’t bother to go in and see his completed (and well-received) film of the events, or to relish the return of his prior glories as adventurer and artist; he sits outside, then lifts a little boy onto his shoulders, and walks into the end credits. While Bowie’s “Queen Bitch” vamps on the soundtrack…

I’m losing any semblance of control myself here. I guess what struck me is that the film was so deeply, deeply sad and affecting, underneath all the silliness and elaborate artifice. I really liked it–I think in the Anderson pantheon it displaces Tenenbaums, and creeps up on Rushmore (‘though I reserve a special love for Bottle Rocket).

I’m curious if any of you have re-seen (or just plain seen) it?