The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou

UK Release Date. 2625 February 2005
Certification. 15
Running Time. 1 hour 59 mins
Director. Wes Anderson
Cast. Cate Blanchett, Willem Dafoe, Michael Gambon, Jeff Goldblum, Anjelica Huston, Bill Murray, Noah Taylor, Owen Wilson.
Rating. 62%

Review.

Of all of Wes Anderson's films, his fourth - The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou - is the one I should love the most. A film that features marine biology, the songs of David Bowie [albeit frequently in Portuguese] and the acting talents of Bill Murray, portraying the eponymous Steve Zissou - an autocratic oceanographer and washed-up star of his own self-produced marine documentaries.

Murray is delightfully droll, bringing a sobering edge to the character. Deadpan throughout, the veteran actor hardly needs to offer an expression; instead, Murray demonstrates he can establish a character through miniscule movements and gestures. Zissou’s thoughts are conveyed through glances and looks at the camera, and the audience understands that Zissou is tired - oh so tired - and desperately wants to capture his heyday one last time.

The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou was released three years after The Royal Tenenbaums, and like the dysfunctional Tenebaums, the Zissou crew of deep-sea divers, adventurers and documentary filmmakers are a family. A family that has adopted its own habits, mannerisms and sensibilities. Their ship, equipment and uniform [a red slouch beanie and chalk blue polyester-spandex short-sleeved oceanographers shirt with epaulettes] are marooned in a world that belongs to Jacques-Yves Cousteau of the 1950s and 1960s. Team Zissou's ship, the Belafonte, is a refurbished World War II frigate containing a research lab, film studio, and spa with a sauna. Drenched in eccentricity, the elaborate, garish, retro-psychedelic surrealism is Anderson at his visual best.

If only The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou were a wee bit funnier. It is such a brilliant idea, especially the way the film is constructed as a faux-documentary, with the calm deliberation of a nature documentary from a more innocent time [The Silent World or World Without Sun].

Despite this criticism, it is nigh on impossible to avoid getting swept up in the sheer whimsy of it all.