The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou

[socketlevel]

little spoilers for all wes anderson's movies galore

yeah but that's exactly as what I've said before--that was a reaction to Chaz's tragedy.  The plane crash was almost played for laughs when it showed Buckley alone in the mountain, surviving the crash.  Buckley's death was as accidental as Ned's, in many respects.
I was sad when Ned died, I didn't feel cheated, but it was not as moving as the ending.  I don't think Wes foreshadows or builds up the tragedies in his films much, in fact, they're usually played off as dark comedy.  Eg. "so we both have dead people in our family", or the opening sequence in Tenenbaums, or Dignan revealing that he's been fired.  Ritchie's suicide was probably a bad parallel.  Maybe everyone else saw it coming, I dunno.  I also felt like their exchange on the helicopter, when Ned read his original letter to Steve (and that's when you find out what Steve meant when he said "the first answer is always") and that was as strong as their bond's ever been, when the father-son arc completes, that's when Ned dies.  I feel like everything's all there, just underplayed.

i didn't think i saw it coming with richie's attempted suicide, i just think it was emotionally justified; but not in the case with owen's character.  it doesn't need to be foreshadowed per say, just not surprising either.

interesting points though,  i think i'll go see it again.  i think it might have been my frame of mind.  it just feels like the characters are going through the motions, not living it as with the case with all his other films.  maybe it was an acting thing.  i don't know,  cause i do like it, it is funny.  but i guess that's it, it's more funny then anything else.

i will check it out again for sure.

-sl-

[tpfkabi]

well, this is probably my favorite film of the year. Eternal's pretty close, but I think this will be the film I will keep coming back to year after year.

i got the soundtrack a couple of days ago. it's a lot better than i thought it was going to be. i like Mothersbaugh's use of electronic beats/keyboards (or is it technically Mothersbaugh as Wolardarsky?). it seems this will turn me on to Bowie. i've wanted check him out and this will send me over the edge.

for those with the soundtrack, the computer link was a huge jip wasn't it?
i put it in thinking there would be some exclusive content......
no way
you go to a page and it says something like "thanks for purchasing the soundtrack." then there is a small survey (age/sex/etc). you fill that out and nothing happens. that's it. i'm wondering if this is why they didn't put Staraflur on the CD to make room for that. if so, that's ridiculous.

[MacGuffin]

FEATURE - Anderson, Murray's LIFE Cinematic
Rushmore; The Royal Tenenbaums; The Life Aquatic. Filmmaker Wes Anderson and actor Bill Murray talk very much like collaborators who are just getting started. By Todd Gilchrist, FilmStew.com

In recent years, Bill Murray has revealed a daring secret about his incalculable comedic filmography; namely, that the mush-mouthed silliness of his early films was strictly a crying-on-the-inside kind of clowning. Movies like Rushmore and Lost in Translation, while outwardly humorous, suggest deep reserves of pain that have gone unexplored over decades of filmic fluff, even in bona fide classics such as Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day.

At the same time, Murray’s closest recent collaborator, filmmaker Wes Anderson, has similarly uncovered a glaring truth that amidst his collection of quirky, melancholic films went mysteriously unnoticed: specifically, that behind that poet’s soul hides the mind of a whip-smart stand-up comedian. Bottle Rocket and The Royal Tenenbaums are introspective films both, but they possess a comic timing that frequently rivals the best mainstream buffoonery in the movie business.

Working together, however, seems to best bring out these impulses in both performers, resulting in some of the most inspired and evocative moments in recent cinema. Although The Life Aquatic is only just now about to creep past the $20 million mark at the U.S. box office, and its awards season run so far is limited to a Best Ensemble Cast nod from the Boston Society of Film Critics and three nominations for the International Press Academy’s Golden Satellite Awards, it contains Anderson’s most ambitious work to date as well as some of the most difficult challenges of Bill Murray’s career.

“To me, the tone is pretty similar to the other movies that Owen [Wilson] and I did together,” suggests Anderson during a recent interview in New York with FilmStew. “But I think this one, the fact that it’s an adventure, and that there’s like a pirate attack and some kind of bigger things, that sort of makes a shift.”

In terms of the characters he has created with co-writer and filmmaker Noah Baumbach (Kicking and Screaming), Anderson feels he’s merely adding a new wing as it were to an already well laid out cinematic blueprint. “I still feel like the characters in this movie could walk into one of the other movies that I’ve done, or vice versa, in a way that they probably wouldn’t be very comfortable walking into somebody else’s movie.”

For the notoriously cantankerous Murray, creating that hermetically sealed world proved to be a particularly taxing experience this time around. “I was physically and emotionally drained after it, and not just from the work,” Murray says. “It was a torturous experience to be away from home for that long. I hated going to work. I was so miserable, personally, that it was really a challenge to work everyday, because I was so lonely and missed my folks so much.”

“It was what I imagined being in prison is like.”

That said, Murray explains that he was well aware of the production’s daunting scope long before he went to Italy, where The Life Aquatic was filmed. “I knew that's where I was going,” he says. “You couldn't make this movie in America at this price. I knew it was going to be big.”

“I knew there was going to be a ship involved and that there was going to be a set as big as the ship,” he continues. “I thought, ‘Well, here we go.’”

Describing Anderson’s evolving oeuvre, Murray jokes that the scope of this latest $25 million Scott Rudin production was entirely predictable. “I knew that was where Wes was headed,” deadpans Murray. “All directors, once they have some success, want to spend a whole heck of a lot of money.”

In paying homage to Jacques Cousteau, it wasn’t just a matter for Anderson of naming the boat piloted by Bill Murray’s title character ‘The Belafonte,’ as in Harry Belafonte sings calypso songs and Cousteau’s ship was ‘The Calypso.’ It was also about filming the seafaring scenes against the craggy and authentic backdrop of a place such as the Mediterranean.

“The underwater conversation scene could very easily have happened in some [hotel] lobby or something,” Anderson admits. “It has nothing to do with being underwater. It has to do with nicknames.”

“I [also] never filmed on a sound stage before,” he adds. “We built this compound next to this castle and we renovated this ship that we bought in South Africa. Each of those things was a separate problem to deal with and I learned all kinds of new things. But it wasn’t like a general change in my approach to how the movie’s going to be made; it’s just new problems to deal with.”

For Murray, the joy of playing oceanographer Steve Zissou involved the fact that the character does not censor any of his thoughts or worry about the perception of misbehavior. “He just sort of lets go,” says Murray. “All the emotions are expressed; he is hit, bang, and out it comes. That's kind of fun to play. You don't get to do that in life that often.”

“In real life, you're supposed to obey some rules of politeness or respect; we don't have time for that in the movies,” adds the actor of Anderson’s liberated approach. “We gotta move right along. Wes wants to see the emotion right now. Again, it's kind of a treat to do that.”

Despite - or perhaps because of - their longstanding relationship, Anderson pulls no punches when he explains how little he ultimately does to make his star feel comfortable. “You know, he has to go through his own process,” he says. “He worked every day of the movie, and it was kind of brutal for him, I think, but also, he loves being in Rome.”

“It’s almost a shtick now about how miserable he was in the movie,” adds Anderson, referring to Murray’s repeated complaints to the media about the cold and wet shooting conditions. “But I was there and I saw him have some amazing times, and he brought that onto the set almost every day of the shoot”

“You know, going to Italy for six months, there are worse tortures than that.”

Anderson says that his ideas for movies come from a variety of different sources. In the case of The Life Aquatic, the notion of a hero scientist is rooted in the filmmaker’s extensive memories of growing up watching Jacques Cousteau, National Geographic and Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom TV fare. But the rather unusual last name of Murray’s character can be linked to a more esoteric source.

“'Zissou' comes from this French photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue, one of my favorite photographers,” Anderson explains. “His brother was nicknamed Zissou, and he took many, many photographs of him.”

“[Zissou] was this amazing character who was an inventor,” the filmmaker continues. “He built airplanes and little cars that would go downhill and things for going underwater, and Lartigue photographed him with his crazy inventions that worked or didn’t work, crashed or didn’t crash. I just liked the spirit of that character.”

For his part, Murray had no trouble identifying with some of Zissou’s idiosyncrasies. “Some of the lines in the script I've actually said,” he reveals. “People try to make characters like this all the time and they usually fail. I just think the kid is really good; I think it was a very hard job to do; and I think I did a type of acting that I've never done before.”

Meanwhile, although Anderson admits he occasionally fears for the believability of the insulated cinematic realities that he creates, he ultimately tries to remain true only to the individual vision of the stories he tells. “I always worry about that because I got that criticism quite a bit for The Royal Tenenbaums,” he recalls. “Smart people who hated it often pointed to that, and I’ve been self-conscious about it.”

“But at the end of the day, I just kind of get going by my own instincts,” he concludes. “I think both of those movies end up being filled with all of these details and all of these ideas, but I don’t really mean for them to be.”

[Two Lane Blacktop]

I'm such a huge fan of "Harold & Maude," that seeing Bud Cort was one if the many things I loved about this flick.  From sfgate.com:

---------------------------------------
Cort plunges into 'The Life Aquatic'
- John McMurtrie
Sunday, December 26, 2004

Every year or so, Bud Cort gets a check in the mail for something like $11. The money is all he earns for having played a lead role in the beloved 1971 film "Harold and Maude." Cort says his paltry residual payment is the only thing that upsets him about the cult film, yet even this he seems to take in stride.

"I make more money every year for one scene as a fry cook in 'Heat' than I do for 'Harold and Maude,' " he says with a chuckle. "But it doesn't matter because you can't put a price on that. You really can't."

It's been decades since Cort's young, earnest and suicide- obsessed Harold -- along with Ruth Gordon's old, mischievous and zesty Maude -- became a countercultural hero, thanks to director Hal Ashby's bittersweet and one-of-a-kind love story, shot in the Bay Area. Cort, now 56, continues to appear in films, but only every few years and mostly in low-budget movies that don't draw a lot of attention.

So it's a treat to see him pop up in Wes Anderson's most recent offbeat comedy, "The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou," which opened this weekend in the Bay Area. Cort's role in the movie is small, but it's a tribute to his acting chops that he brings added life to a part that, in the wrong hands, could easily have been overlooked.

"The Life Aquatic" concerns the adventures of Steve Zissou (Bill Murray), a dispirited oceanographer on a quest to hunt down a mysterious shark that killed his partner. Traveling with him and his motley crew is an Air Kentucky co-pilot (Owen Wilson) who may or may not be Zissou's son.

Cort plays Bill Ubell, who is keeping an eye on team Zissou's finances --

or, as Zissou routinely calls him, he's "the bond company stooge."

Ubell certainly looks the part of a bond company stooge -- he's dumpy, balding and mustachioed and wears a hideous brown tie, ungainly glasses and a bland short-sleeved shirt that even the most unfashionable accountant would find repulsive. But Cort manages to make him a humorous and sympathetic -- if pathetic -- character. When provoked, he protests. "I'm also a human being," he asserts, his innocent, puppy-dog eyes open wide.

When Filipino pirates raid Zissou's ship (off the coast of Italy, of all places), the stooge acts as a negotiator -- it so happens he speaks Tagalog. The unlikely sight of a bumbling, half-blindfolded American pleading for mercy in fluent Tagalog is the sort of wonderfully absurd and droll detail that director and co-writer Anderson, who also helmed "Rushmore" and "The Royal Tenenbaums," delights in.

"I've gotten to know Bud over the past few years, and I wanted to write a part for him," Anderson says by phone from New York. "That character is there just so there's something for Bud to play."

Anderson (who was 2 when "Harold and Maude" came out) says what drew him to Cort were the actor's minor but effective roles in the 2000 biopic "Pollock" (as Howard Putzel, Peggy Guggenheim's charming right-hand man) and the 1995 thriller "Heat" (as a surly restaurant worker).

"He's very emotionally accessible," Anderson says. "You can really connect with him. He's absolutely and utterly unique -- there's no one else like him."

When Anderson sent Cort the "Life Aquatic" script, the actor recalls it as one of the best he had ever read.

"Halfway through it, I was sobbing," he says from New York, where the native of nearby Rye (and a longtime Angeleno), was attending the film's premiere. "It was just so touching to me -- the whole fear of abandonment and loneliness of people choosing a life on the ocean. I come from a whole family of fishermen from Gloucester, Mass., and most of them were lost at sea. "

The ocean is close enough to Cort's heart that he says he worked some of his feelings about politics and "the death of the sea life" into his dialogue with the pirates. That was when he was learning his lines in Indonesian -- before problems ensued.

"I was about to get on the plane to go to Italy and Wes called and said, 'Listen, um, I hate to ask you, but we can't find any Indonesian actors over here. Would you mind learning it in Filipino?' I said, 'Well, sure, Wes.' I started to learn it, but Filipino has nothing to do with Indonesian, so it was a very stressful situation."

As much fun as Cort had in Italy -- bonding with the cast (and going on a bender with Murray, an old friend) -- the actor says the six-month shoot was "very, very, very tough" for everyone, largely because they were at sea in the middle of winter. And because Cort's character gets kidnapped by the pirates (and is held at the shabby remnants of the improbably named Hotel Citroen), Cort decided he needed to lose 50 pounds to look the part of a kidnapping victim.

"Wes was scared," Cort recalls. "He said, 'I think it's dangerous.' And I said, 'I like a challenge.' So I did it."

In the process, Cort got quite ill on a few occasions. (It doesn't help that, unless you know him well, he says, you don't really notice his weight loss in the film.)

Raised as a "very strict Catholic," Cort attended Mass every Sunday (as he usually does) to pray for good health during the shoot. While in Italy, he bought all sorts of religious jewelry -- "as protection to get me through the goddamn movie," he says with a laugh. "You should see what I'm wearing now. I'm wearing a cross, I'm wearing a jade Buddha, I'm wearing a Mother Teresa from the beatification, I'm wearing a Padre Pio. What else have I got here? I'm wearing the blessed Virgin, I'm wearing St. Christopher."

Discussing his weight loss, Cort acknowledges that he gets immersed in his roles more than other actors might: "I kind of get fixated on projects and characters, and I guess the smarter thing would be to just hop, skip and jump from (one film to the next). I don't know -- I like to really work on stuff. "

Regarding his long career, he says, "I have this bizarre track record. I spent seven years trying to do a film with Marlon Brando, and the day I got him to say yes, the money fell through."

Cort also spent years developing a one-man show about Truman Capote. "It's very painful to talk about," he says, adding only that the idea was stolen from him.

Looking back at "Harold and Maude," Cort recalls it as "a glorious, serendipitous occurrence of great script, great director, fabulous actress. It was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing."

He says he sees its influence "in 10 movies a year," citing "Garden State, " "Secretary" and "Igby Goes Down."

"I see scenes from it or moments from it, but they're not it," he says. "They're attempts at it."

As fond as he is of the film, Cort has also worked hard to avoid being typecast as Harold. Before "Harold and Maude," the former stand-up comedian (born Walter Edward Cox) was in two 1970 Robert Altman films, "MASH" and "Brewster McCloud." After playing Harold, Cort got so many offers to play weirdos that the actor, then an occasional resident at Groucho Marx's mansion, didn't work for several years. A serious car accident in 1979 was another setback.

Cort has appeared in dozens of films and TV shows (some with cringe- inducing titles, such as "Invaders From Mars" and "South of Heaven, West of Hell"). "I think people realize that, yes, I did that film," he says of "Harold and Maude." "But I've certainly done enough things to give an idea of the breadth of curiosity I have for all kinds of people."

As for what the future holds, Cort, who doesn't even have an agent, is doubtful. Acting in "The Life Aquatic" was a pleasure and a rare privilege, he says, because "most of the stuff I see is just such swill, and most of the stuff I read is such swill. And what people think I might be in love with, I'm pretty much not. I'm more interested in what I wouldn't be thought of for."

[ono]

So I saw this on Christmas Day and enjoyed it a lot.  Haven't been able to write anything about it until now, and this is an attempt at a somewhat more formal criticism, as I've submitted for a campus publication as well.  I tried a few things: no serious spoilers, no serious plot discussion (a bane of good criticism), and no mention of actors (people can find that information on the Internet, and it's distracting reading parentheticals).  I don't know if this approach is right.  Comments would be helpful, and discussion of the film even better.  I didn't discuss SPOILERSthe helicopter crash, which is really what made the film for me, so more on that would be good.  It was an excellent moment, because it depicted with a realism not seen in a long time what a crash is actually like.  There shouldn't be any more spoilers after this, but for those extremely careful, our definition of "spoiler" may differ.

The piece:

Wes Anderson's "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" is a welcome departure from his earlier works.  It can't be qualified or quantified based on any previous notions of what a film should be, and that is what it should be appreciated for.  Preconceived notions will get you nowhere.  Anderson has become way too smart (and he probably always has been) to make this into a mess.  Even if it is a mess, it is a glorious one.

"Aquatic"'s plot is paper thin, but "plot" is a four-letter word anyway, too often drooled across the lips of people way too accustomed to those same preconceived notions.  Great films don't get made when they adhere to these unwritten, arbitrary expectations.  For the pedantic, though, Steve Zissou is a washed-up Cousteau-esque oceanographer.  He sets out to find and destroy the shark that ate his friend, with help from his crew, his ex-wife, her new husband, a pregnant reporter, and Ned Plimpton, a man who may or may not be his son.

Gripes that "Aquatic" is brimming in style and suffers in substance are both substantial and frivolous.  Consider the Crayon Pony Fish.  In a fitting tone-setter, Zissou is given this fish as a gift from a young boy who admires him.  During a scuffle, the bag holding the fish is punctured.  Zissou pours the fish and water into a champagne flute and holds it high above is head, to protect this gift as he wades throug the crowd.  It is only after the matter of Zissou's son is settled that this little boy appears again, and when he does, "the adventure" Zissou has undertaken will have been worth it.

The film does have structure, and is punctuated by a black minstrel singing David Bowie songs in Portuguese.  That alone is worth seeing.  The film flows through this structure, much like the good ship Belafonte, moving from scene to scene with the only reason being whatever makes sense to Anderson.  He has invented his own version of film language by borrowing from vocabularies of other filmic staples, such as the French New Wave and certain movies of the action genre.  Through this language, Anderson wants to show you "this and this and this" -- little snapshots of life with these people so as to illuminate what makes Zissou tick.

The downside to this approach is that many characters are underwritten.  Most interesting are Eleanor and Alistair; Jane, the pregnant reporter and involuntary wedge between Steve and Ned is also a bit neglected.  The familial relationships were the most interesting thing about "The Royal Tenenbaums," and the subtext of a mother's absence gave a lot of its poignant sadness to "Rushmore."  No matter how surreal the action scenes were, they truly detracted from a lot of the poignancy to be had in the film -- the poignancy Anderson is known for.

The film does have its problems, but any film as experimental and daring as this one is bound to have them.  Anderson concentrated so much on the minute and miniscule details that he couldn't quite see the forest for the trees, but that is forgiven.  After all, "what might have been" fits for the reality of this film just as much as it does for the world inhabited by Steve and Ned.

[cine]

ted would be proud.

[tpfkabi]

i never found cate blanchett attractive before her portrayal of Jane.

has she been the female object of affection in any films before?

[MacGuffin]

i never found cate blanchett attractive before her portrayal of Jane.

has she been the female object of affection in any films before?

[Ghostboy]

Also: Pushing Tin.

[tpfkabi]

are those movies worth watching?

i saw Life Aquatic for the third time last night. i wish people here knew how to setup the projector. the left side was cut off, so you couldn't read parts of the lower left titles.

[meatball]

The title "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" is overly long and awkward, but sorta cute when you think about it. The movie is overly long and awkward, and is sorta cute when you think about it.

When you stop thinking about it, you realize that all the gags (matching outfits, adidas shoes, orca, colorful sealife) are just backflips because the movie doesn't have anything real or new to say. It just doesn't have anything to say at all.

I wanted to believe that Wes Anderson had grown as a filmmaker and Life Aquatic would be something new and exciting from him. But it's just a rehash of every Wes Anderson movie that came before it. Even worse, it's a sloppy re-hash. I don't think you can really defend it's sloppiness by saying "but real life is loose." This isn't real life. It's a sloppy movie that tries too hard, does a lot of cute-at-first blackflips and pratfalls, but you can only patronize it for so long.

Like the Crayon Pony Fish, The Life Aquatic is a one trick pony that some people will love because "hey, look it's a crayon pony fish!" If you get off on that cute, kitschy stuff, more power to you.

[picolas]

i imagine you quietly saying that in the corner of an enormous warehouse or airplane hanger, perched on a tiny wooden stool while looking down, arms folded. in a good way.

[meatball]

If you imagine me like that, it's because everyone else is in the other corner of the hangar staring at a crayon pony fish in a wine glass and singing it's praises.

[Sleuth]

The title "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" is overly long and awkward, but sorta cute when you think about it. The movie is overly long and awkward, and is sorta cute when you think about it.

When you stop thinking about it, you realize that all the gags (matching outfits, adidas shoes, orca, colorful sealife) are just backflips because the movie doesn't have anything real or new to say. It just doesn't have anything to say at all.

I wanted to believe that Wes Anderson had grown as a filmmaker and Life Aquatic would be something new and exciting from him. But it's just a rehash of every Wes Anderson movie that came before it. Even worse, it's a sloppy re-hash. I don't think you can really defend it's sloppiness by saying "but real life is loose." This isn't real life. It's a sloppy movie that tries too hard, does a lot of cute-at-first blackflips and pratfalls, but you can only patronize it for so long.

Like the Crayon Pony Fish, The Life Aquatic is a one trick pony that some people will love because "hey, look it's a crayon pony fish!" If you get off on that cute, kitschy stuff, more power to you.

It sounds like you got lost on the details

[tpfkabi]

i thought it got panned by critics and got low ratings on the tomato meter and maybe imdb, too. if you were to go through all these posts on xixax i imagine it would 50/50 or maybe slightly towards the negative side.