The movie Life Aquatic is a parody and satire of famous documentaries about marine life filmed by an oceanographer, Jacque-Yves Constant. This movie portrays marine expeditions and relations between crew members, their discoveries, and the hardship faced by oceanographers. This movie can be described as a typical science fiction that marked a turn away from the naive technological movies that often characterized the genre in its early decades. The Life Aquatic satirizes marine expeditions and centers on human relations between characters and their love affairs using expeditions as a background only.
The movie is centered on the main character, Steve Zissou, a prototype of Jacque-Yves Constant. His best friend, Esteban du Plantier, is killed by a “Jaguar shark”. Steve Zissou decides to find this marine creature and take revenge upon it. The main limitation of this movie is that it depicts events in a humorous way portraying sailors as light-minded and impractical. For instance, one of the crew members is a musician who likes Devid Bowie songs and Vikram Ray, a Sikh, Vladimir Wolodarsky, a score composer. These characters display many negative characteristics such as absent-mindedness and vagueness. The plot centers on the journeys and the crew that is in many ways a utopian community.
The movie does not overcome certain stereotypical expectations about sex and gender and is, therefore, unable to take advantage of the free sexual environment. By focusing on an unhappy individual, Jane Winslett-Richardson indicates that no society can ever be ideal for everyone: she is pregnant from her married boss. This focus allows the director, Anderson, to construct a narrative in which viewers can follow the adventures of multiple protagonists in the classic science fiction mode. A desire to take revenge upon a creature can be taken as a symbol of liberation from the stifling banality of everyday life in this world.
Thus, the irony is that marine expatiations and adventures are depicted as a background of the movie while the movie conflict is centered on human relations and love relations. A pregnant Jane Winslett-Richardson falls in love with one of the crew members, Ned. Ned’s status, he is perhaps the least exemplary figure in the novel) allows the movie to avoid the conventional individualism that is a central part of the ideology. After all, the acceptance of individuality is a central value of society, to the point that any attempt at behavior in such a society is always in danger of being appropriated as an example of the society’s fundamental benevolence. In this small society, there is nothing more conventional and conformist than being different. The dialogue between the narrative that constitutes the bulk of the movie indicates that expeditions are only a form while human relations are the main focus of this film
The main limitation and a negative issue are that the movie is devoted to a famous oceanographer but portrays a fictional and unrealistic world of marine expeditions and adventures. The movie does not portray realistic problems and troubles faced by researchers, their everyday work, and communication. For instance, Bobby Ogata, a frogman, is always portrayed eating Anne-Marie Sakowitz is depicted as a light-minded person, usually topless. Also, the movie depicts several surrogate sons of Steve. This theme spoils the impression of the movie and adds ironic attitudes towards Steve and the real value of his investigations and journeys.
The movie portrays a submarine, the Belafonte, like an old but well-equipped boat. The negative image of a crew and its mission is heated by financial problems and pirates. Drawing upon many of the motifs central to its predecessor, the movie depicts a society in which power and money are the central facts of human existence. It is possible to say that the movie features a utopian plot in which a conflict arises between nonconformist individuals (the crew of the Belafonte) and the conformist society around them. In particular, the movie centers on Belafonte. However, in a motif that reinforces the appearance versus reality theme), the aim of the expedition turns out to be a documentary about marine life and animals.
In general, the main theme of the movie is a hedonistic society in which individuals spend most of their time in the pursuit of instant happiness through sex and entertainment that are continually broadcast to keep the minds. At first glance, then, this society is far different from the modern world and real Jacque-Yves Constean’s expeditions. However, the emphasis on pleasure in society masks a deep-seated lack of individual liberty. Indeed, sex and popular culture are intended primarily to divert attention from social problems and to prevent individuals from developing any sort of strong feelings that might lead them to challenge official authority. Clearly, then, this movie works not through the overt exercise of power but through the more subtle manipulations that inform modern society in the West.
The movie depicts a theme of death and loss typical for many oceanographic journeys. Looking for Jaguar Shark, the helicopter crashes, and Ned is killed. When Steve finds a shark he is impressed by its beauty and unusual behavior; the irony is that he also lacks dynamite to kill it. This is one of the most controversial parts of the movie because marine explorers and oceanographers do not kill unique animals but investigate and analyze their behavior and habits, environment, and biological peculiarities. Like many science fictions, Life Aquatic takes much of its plot from the conflict between the demands of a conformist society and the desires of a nonconformist individual. In this case, the nonconformist is Steve, an intellectual whose individualist quirks are attributed by most of his acquaintances. He is not even a conscious rebel–he wants to fit in, but simply cannot, his difference is as ingrained as the sameness of his fellow citizens. At the end of the movie, Steve wins a cinematographic award for his documentary. He gains global recognition and appraisal for his marine expeditions and investigations. He might therefore seem to be a figure of natural humanity as opposed to the artificially conditioned humans and other “civilized” parts of the world. However, the movie makes it clear that Steve has also been conditioned by the society in which he has lived, his values being no more natural.
In sum, the movie is a satire and acute irony on famous oceanographic expeditions and journeys. It contrasts between the “high art” of real marine expeditions aimed to investigate marine life and marine animals (depicted as a background of the movie) and the banality of popular cultural and human relations like surrogate sons and love affairs between crew members. Steve’s expectations from and reactions to the experiences he encounters are almost entirely determined by his relations with people and communication between crew members. This world is a far different stage than Jacque-Yves Constean’s, Steve and other characters are conditioned in the real world in terms of anything other than stereotypes.
Works Cited
The Life Aquatic. dir, by W. Anderson. DVD. 2004.