The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)

IMDB

Why oh why did this movie get panned so hard? It's got an abysmal 50% at Rotten Tomatoes (as opposed to 70% with The Royal Tenenbaums, or 85% with Rushmore. Shit, even Bottle Rocket got 75%). What happened in between the projection and the critics eyeballs that they failed to recognize this absolute master work? Is it like battery polarity, when you mix post-modern critics with certain movies they start repelling each other?

What seems to set the polarity--and this is an anathema to our modern, overly smart culture-soaked critical pool--is earnestness. It's not that it lacks irony, but this movie is a love poem to Jacques Cousteau and his crew, and not the mocking of a iconoclast that would have been much easier to make, and possibly more popular. Instead, Anderson took us on a voyage of discovery past the known world of Cousteau to the unknown world of Zissou--but isn't it true that Cousteau's world was just as strange and beautiful to the people who watched his works? Isn't the world created by Anderson a logical extension of such a world, fictionalized to impose the same sense of wonder on the modern audience?

I once thought that Wes Anderson kept a yardstick between himself and his characters--the requisite ironic distance so that he could mock them playfully--but in reviewing some of his films, I've come to change my mind. I think he's in love with his characters, and he treats them with great affection. I declare him post-ironic (I've quoted it before, but it's worth saying again. The Hipster Handbook says "To a hipster, irony caries more weight than reason". Has Anderson broken the sixth wall? The wall of necessary irony and emotional detachment?).

Roger Ebert said that "My rational mind informs me that this movie doesn't work." I had no such qualms. Maybe if you break it down in three-act segments, with rigidly constructed character arcs you might find some flaws, but the emotional landscape of this film is engrossing and endlessly bitter sweet. It feels like the last day of camp, when you're leaving all the good friends you've made to go back to your regular life. It's a movie I'm very comfortable with.

Anderson's attention to detail is flawless--his shots and technique perfect. Everything from the fictional fish to the cut-away boat were spot on. Even the carefully considered and controlled typography--using a stroked Futura, as opposed to his usual filled Futura--evokes a metaphor of loneliness.

Everyone I've talked to who loved the film were also Cousteau fans. Maybe that's the prerequisite, or the polarity switch. When it comes to investing yourself into this work, it helps to know the inspiration. I predict (that I am a fool for making a prediction, however...) that this film will be rediscovered in the future, and considered one of his best. History will be kind to Zissou. It was certainly kind to me, I loved every second of it.