Roumen's Weblog

An Extraordinary Movie

I went to the cinema to see The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. It was a great experience. The movie's web page with playable clips is here:

http://lifeaquatic.movies.go.com/main.html

Wait! Before you will go to see the movie or get DVD and then write me comments like "this was the worst movie I've ever seen" I have several warnings for you. This is not mainstream. It's a special movie for special people. It looks like if it was a low-budget movie filmed by several students. Some of the music even sounds like a midi file! If you're after visual effects, great scenes, advanced computer graphics, ultra 3D THX surround sound played on 32 huge loudspeakers, this one is certainly not for you.

The story is strange. A crew full of loosers sailing the seas, searching for a "jaguar shark" who killed the captain's friend, trying to film a movie for 12-year old children? Broken relationships, lost hopes, captain meets his adult son he didn't want to have, his wife wants to divorce, he drinks too much and fells in love with a younger pregnant woman who by no chance wants to have anything with him. Everybody's wearing red stocking caps which just look awful and seems to be proud to be members of the Zissou team, lead by a captain who's life is a neverending depression.

What can be interesting on such a movie? Well, the story is so absurd, that it actually becomes funny. There are moments where you can't stop laughing, because the situation is so bad or just because of the way the movie looks so crappy. The actors play their roles exceptionally. And surprisingly, the movie is full of deeper thoughts. It touches you, maybe because one of your relationships went also wrong or because you didn't want to accept at one point of your life becoming adult. Or maybe because you are also still searching for something in your life and cannot exactly name what it is.

As written in one of the reviews, this movie touches deeply 1 of 10 people, while the other 9 don't understand what's special on it. I think it's worth trying if you are from the first group.

P.S. You have to see the movie if you like music of David Bowie. It's full of his songs sang in Portugese :-)