The Wes Anderson Collection, Chapter 4: "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" | MZS

I love how Roger Ebert's review of "The Life Aquatic" quotes a cutting phrase from his TV review of the film, but in service of what already feels like a revision: "My rational mind informs me that this movie doesn't work. Yet I hear a subversive whisper: Since it does so many other things, does it have to work, too? Can't it just exist? 'Terminal whimsy,' I called it on the TV show. Yes, but isn't that better than half-hearted whimsy, or no whimsy at all? Wes Anderson's 'The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" is the damnedest film. I can't recommend it, but I would not for one second discourage you from seeing it.'"

My already great admiration for the film grew as I dealt with a string of deaths between 2006 and 2009—my wife, my best friend and my stepmother, one after the other. 

I watched "The Life Aquatic" a couple of times a year during that period. Each time it helped me a bit more, for reasons I get into in this video essay, as well as in the forthcoming fourth chapter, about the similarly-death-haunted "The Darjeeling Limited." 

Few American directors are as obsessed with the continuing psychic aftershocks of loss as Anderson, as this film, "Darjeeling" and "The Royal Tenenbaums" and "Rushmore" make plain. And yet somehow his movies don't feel morbid. They take a marvelously balanced attitude, cherishing all the bustle and humor and pettiness and absurdity and other mundane realities that make up daily life in the aftermath of catastrophe, but without minimizing the burden of all that weight. This is is one of the very few movies that I can unhesitatingly say made a tangible, positive difference in my life.  

I've reprinted a version of the "Life Aquatic" essay that appears in "The Wes Anderson Collection." It's quite a bit longer than the version that made print, with more digressions, but considering the subject, that seems somehow fitting.

"I'm going to go on an overnight drunk, and in ten days I'm going to set out to find the shark that ate my friend and destroy it. Anyone who wants to tag along is more than welcome." 

With that declaration, the naturalist/director/pothead hero of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou drags the crew of his research vessel The Belafonte on a mission to kill the dreaded Jaguar Shark. It sounds like the plot of a sci-fi thriller, or maybe the umpteenth retelling of Moby Dick or Jaws or some other nautical epic. But while Wes Anderson's fourth film draws on these modes and others, it's defiantly unique. Like its predecessor The Royal Tenenbaums, but more so, Aquatic anchors its dazzling images and zig-zaggy detours to strong, basic themes: the lived experience of grief; the futility of revenge; the anxiety of entering middle age and wondering if you'll leave a legacy along with your unfinished business. 

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