BILL MURRAY LOST AT SEA

THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU
Directed by Wes Anderson; written by Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach; cinematography by Robert D. Yeoman; editing by David Moritz and Daniel R. Padgett; original music by Mark Mothersbaugh; production design by Mark Friedberg; art direction by Stefano Maria Ortolani; set decoration by Gretchen Rau; costume design by Milena Canonero
With: Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Cate Blanchett, Anjelica Huston, Willem Dafoe, Michael Gambon, Jeff Goldblum, Noah Taylor, Bud Cort, Seu Jorge, Robyn Cohen, and Seymour Cassel. Rated R for language, some drug use, violence, and partial nudity. Running time: 119 Minutes

1/2  

By Joel Johnson

Wes Anderson’s new film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou features Bill Murray and plays like a series of quirkily related skits from Murray’s old show Saturday Night Live. Like a typical Saturday Night Live program, the result is very uneven with some hilarious sequences and some comically inert ones. Murray has been featured in three of Wes Anderson’s films, but this time he is the lead character. Murray’s Steve Zissou is an ersatz Jacques Cousteau. We quickly recognize that the career of this cut-rate oceanographer is—pardon the expression—sinking fast.

Like Cousteau, Steve Zissou makes films—all titled The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou: followed by a unique title after the colon—about his ocean exploration adventures. The film opens with Zissou showing his latest opus at a film festival. This dubious contribution to the world of cinema startlingly ends in a cliffhanger with Zissou’s partner Esteban du Plantier (Seymour Cassel) being eaten by a “Jaguar Shark.” After the screening, Zissou announces that his next film will be a documentary of his vengeance against the villainous Jaguar Shark that ate Esteban. This plan, reminiscent of Captain Ahab from Moby Dick, shocks the naturalist community that patronizes his work.

It is also at this festival that he meets Ned Plimpton (Owen Wilson), a young man who may be his son. Wilson, sporting a Southern accent that makes his speech even more languorous than usual, is quickly induced to turn in his Air Kentucky wings for the red watchcap and Speedo of Team Zissou. The father-son relationship is a familiar theme in Mr. Anderson’s films and certainly not in a Father Knows Best sort of way. Anderson’s fathers are irascible and immature. The sons are on a quest for deeper connection with this distant, emotionally isolated figure.

Complicating the father-son relationship is the British journalist Jane Winslett-Richardson (Cate Blanchett). She arrives in the midst of her own personal crisis, being pregnant by her magazine’s married editor. Like Ned, Jane was a member of the Zissou Society as a child, and she has come to do a cover feature on her childhood hero. Disappointed after meeting her former hero, she begins asking him a series of eviscerating questions. His responses alternate between truculence and courtship. Steve’s fantasies of seduction wither when he discovers that Jane is more interested in Ned.

Adding to the film’s clutter are several other characters. There’s Zissou’s ex-wife Eleanor (Anjelica Huston)—described as the brains behind Team Zissou. Another of Eleanor’s ex-husbands is rival oceanographer Alistair Hennessey (Jeff Goldblum). The natty Hennessey is “part homosexual” with a beefcake crew manning his amply funded research expedition. Michael Gambon plays Zissou’s film producer Oseary Drakoulias—like his Jimmy Langton character in Being Julia, another over-the-top eccentric entertainment biz insider. Bud Cort plays Bill Ubell, the “Bond Company Stooge,” who is to oversee the spending on Zissou’s film. Klaus Daimler (Willem Dafoe) is Zissou’s devoted first mate, feeling displaced by the arrival of the putative son Ned. Other crew members are Vladimir Wolodarsky (Noah Taylor) and Pelé dos Santos (Seu Jorge), whose primary role is to sing David Bowie songs in Portuguese.

This is a zany film that is constantly surprising. This is often an irresistibly attractive feature for film critics forced to watch a steady diet of predictable genre films. While The Life Aquatic doesn’t fit neatly into a formulaic genre, it doesn’t flow in an organic way either. It establishes a level of realism and then undercuts that. Part of the film is shot on a ship deck. Then part of the film is played out in a faux cutaway representation of the ship’s hull. There’s animation representing the strikingly beautiful creatures of the sea. There’s a beautiful “crayon seahorse,” but it clearly is not real. The characters take themselves seriously but then lurch into total absurdity. It starts with the three central characters. Murray’s tired Zissou seems impossible to believe as ever being a credible explorer-filmmaker. Wilson’s Ned seems too old to be so eager for his father’s approval—especially this father’s approval. Only Cate Blanchett seems credible as the disillusioned journalist. Then Zissou’s research vessel, The Belafonte, is attacked by Filipino pirates. The film then turns into an action-adventure film—sort of. The audience watches this all unfold but never gets emotionally involved in the story the film is trying to tell. There is playful humor throughout; it just doesn’t seem to work consistently. Sometimes it’s outrageously funny, and sometimes it badly misfires. This is the weakest of Wes Anderson’s film. One doesn’t sense a burning reason why this film had to be made, and it is easily forgettable, but that doesn’t stop it from being very entertaining on an intermittent basis.  

 

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