The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is a work of genius, though you wouldn't know by the way it rambles. It took me to get to the end of the movie to realize it.
This is essentially a remake of Fellini's 8 1/2, perhaps done as outright farce, and with a touch of farcical brutality. 8 1/2's Guido has (and resolves) his crisis in the process of making a single movie, but we meet Zissou in the midst of a slow-motion train wreck crisis spanning the prior 10-to-15 years of his career; really, a life in the midst of being completely botched. Ouch. And there are other bumps and bruises along the way, such as the bit of seemingly opportunistic shadow sparing with Ned's life and character.
It's cool: You are borne along by the barrage of postmodern yucks, and rewarded at the end by a wonderful--and wonderfully challenging--mythic payload: Are *you* ready to face your mortality, as did Zissou? Will you succeed? I think the film tries to offer a hope to those of us who may sometimes feel as lost as Zissou; he made it, and so can we. We're not hallucinating, and the Leopard Shark awaits us. Sure, it's deadly and dangerous, but it's also beautiful, and we just have to buck up and look into its maw. And the rewards of doing so are very, very real.
By the way, a clue that the filmmakers had Fellini in mind is the staircase scene at the end. I mean, it could just be a case of both films tapping the same archetype, but somehow I doubt it.
Enjoy! Your life, that is!
This is essentially a remake of Fellini's 8 1/2, perhaps done as outright farce, and with a touch of farcical brutality. 8 1/2's Guido has (and resolves) his crisis in the process of making a single movie, but we meet Zissou in the midst of a slow-motion train wreck crisis spanning the prior 10-to-15 years of his career; really, a life in the midst of being completely botched. Ouch. And there are other bumps and bruises along the way, such as the bit of seemingly opportunistic shadow sparing with Ned's life and character.
It's cool: You are borne along by the barrage of postmodern yucks, and rewarded at the end by a wonderful--and wonderfully challenging--mythic payload: Are *you* ready to face your mortality, as did Zissou? Will you succeed? I think the film tries to offer a hope to those of us who may sometimes feel as lost as Zissou; he made it, and so can we. We're not hallucinating, and the Leopard Shark awaits us. Sure, it's deadly and dangerous, but it's also beautiful, and we just have to buck up and look into its maw. And the rewards of doing so are very, very real.
By the way, a clue that the filmmakers had Fellini in mind is the staircase scene at the end. I mean, it could just be a case of both films tapping the same archetype, but somehow I doubt it.
Enjoy! Your life, that is!