THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU
January 12th, 2005 by Andre Soares
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) 
Director: Wes Anderson. Screenplay: Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach. Cast: Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Cate Blanchett, Anjelica Huston, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Michael Gambon, Noah Taylor, Bud Cort, Seu Jorge, Robyn Cohen, Seymour Cassel
AT SEA WITH BILL ENNUI
Those who roll in the aisles laughing whenever Bill Murray raises a tired eyebrow, or when he indicates boredom through sideway glances, or when he sighs with the air of someone who’s seen it all, will love Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. On the other hand, those of us who find Bill Murray’s chronic ennui contagious might consider looking elsewhere for entertainment.
The story of oceanographer-cum-TV-personality Steve Zissou’s quest for revenge against a mythical shark that dined on his deep-sea-diving partner — 1968 Academy Award nominee Seymour Cassel (for Faces) no less — The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is an overlong, aimless one-third existential drama, one-third adventure B-movie, and one-third parody of the old Jacques Cousteau documentaries about underwater life. Partly because of Murray’s flat non-performance as the Steve Zissou of the title, the picture manages to fail as drama, adventure, and comedy. (See synopsis.)
In order to find the elusive aquatic beast, Zissou recruits a motley crew of assistants and hangers-on, including his estranged wife, Anjelica Huston; Southern pilot Owen Wilson, who may or may not be Zissou’s son; overly tanned journalist Cate Blanchett; a layabout Brazilian singer (Seu Jorge from Cidade de Deus / City of God); and assorted youthful bit players.
All types of mishaps take place during the journey, from an attack by Southeast Asian pirates to (maybe) father-son rivalry for the attention of the tanned reporter. Yet, no matter how many turns Wes Anderson and coscreenwriter Noah Baumbach come up with for The Life Aquatic, little of interest actually takes place on screen.
Crises and red herrings (such as the mystery behind Zissou’s “son”) are thrown into the narrative mix, but those turn out to be mere distractions, leading nowhere in terms of plot or character development. Compounding matters, the dialogue is full of throwaway lines that should have been discarded long before shooting began. Those lines are supposed to add a quirkily humorous flavor to the proceedings, but they turn out to be neither quirky nor humorous.
But despite its myriad shortcomings, Wes Anderson’s film does have its points of interest. Anderson’s characters are always doing something, and every now and then those bits of business that take place in the background are quite funny — especially if compared to what is happening in the foreground.
Additionally, The Life Aquatic offers a couple of performers in good form: Veteran Bud Cort (the first half of Harold and Maude), who is memorable in a small role as a hapless insurance man, and Owen Wilson, who somehow manages to be creepy, sexy, geeky, and likable all at the same time.
Anjelica Huston is always a welcome presence, and she commands attention whenever she is on screen even though the Oscar-winning actress is not given much to do. In fact, throughout the film Huston looks even more ennuiée than Bill Murray. (Note: Huston’s presence in The Life Aquatic proves once and for all that she and Yoko Ono were separated at birth.)
Cary Grant could have gotten away with a role like Steve Zissou. Instead of conveying a mixture of boredom and indifference to it all, Grant’s Zissou, no matter how many of his partners had been turned into shark brunch, would still have been able to feel and express amusement and annoyance at life’s shenanigans.
Bill Murray, of course, is not Cary Grant, but Murray has done excellent work in the past when he stretched his bored-to-death persona to psychotic extremes — as in his paranoid puppeteer in Tim Robbins’s otherwise dismal Cradle Will Rock. Admittedly, psychotic neurosis would have been a tad much for the hero of something like The Life Aquatic, but Murray’s Zissou would have greatly benefited from a sharper edge. The star, however, is too smugly proud of his trademark blasé demeanor to display any sort of psychological undercurrent, unless one considers his bravery in letting himself be filmed in swim trunks as a form of Freudian daring. Murray’s unwillingness to let his façade drop does both himself and the film a monumental disservice during a climactic tearful moment that is so embarrassingly awful that it isn’t even funny.
Wes Anderson’s decision to put his movie on Murray’s bare shoulders and torso is a total misfire, for the most interesting things about The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou are the bizarre details along the periphery of plot and picture. Anjelica Huston looking like Yoko Ono and a shark looking like an underwater Christmas tree are interesting to watch, but Anderson fails to achieve the same results with his star, whether deadpanning in Speedos or crying fully clothed.
After his partner Esteban du Plantier (Seymour Cassel) gets eaten by the gigantic Jaguar Shark, oceanographer and TV personality Steve Zissou (Bill Murray) sets out on a quest to find and destroy the gluttonous shark. Zissou assembles a crew that includes, at one point or another, Ned Plimpton (Owen Wilson), a man who claims to be his son; a somewhat ditzy journalist, Jane Winslett-Richardson (Cate Blanchett); Pelé dos Santos, a guitar-playing Brazilian (Seu Jorge); Zissou’s estranged wife, Eleanor (Anjelica Huston), and several students on a quest for college credits.
Problems mount up as Zissou is threatened with bankruptcy; his chief rival, the effete Alistair Hennessey (Jeff Goldblum) and his all-hunk crew shows up on the scene to humiliate him; and Southeast Asian pirates seize the boat. After a bloody gunfight, Zissou regains control of his vessel, but his life remains a mess. The wife won’t talk to him, the son is having an affair with the journalist (who also happens to be the object of Zissou’s desires), and the Jaguar Shark remains as elusive as ever.
More bloody gunfights, daring rescues, and personal conflicts ensue, but Zissou remains committed to his hunt for the shark. But if he does ever find the big fish of his nightmares, will he really be able to destroy it?
THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU on DVD
THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU Review by Dan Schneider
LA MALA EDUCACIÓN / BAD EDUCATION
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