Amy's Robot

In Defense of The Life Aquatic

In browsing around viewers' comments and some reviews of Wes Anderson's new movie, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, I've noticed a trend in the negative reactions the movie is getting. A lot of critics' reviews have been positive (examples include the New York Times review by A.O. Scott, who doesn't usually like narrative meandering, and Underground Online) but I see references to the movie's lack of narrative structure over and over again, mostly from regular viewers. Comments about Anderson being a good set designer*, but not a good storyteller come up often. He also gets called "precious" a lot. My own personal least favorite film reviewer ever, Richard Roeper (aka Ebert's monkey-boy), says "This is one of the most irritating, self-conscious and smug films of the year, working neither as a dark comedy nor a character study."

Well, I have to speak up. I know that apart from a few lucky folks who got access to a preview, no one has seen this movie yet outside of New York and LA, but that's OK. I will concede that The Life Aquatic is probably not Wes Anderson's best movie: there are a few story tangents that don't go anywhere or contribute much to the overall feel of the movie, and in some scenes the actors are wooden. It is a very stylized movie, and self-conscious in its depiction of how movies are made; many scenes are about Steve Zissou's crew creating his series of documentary films. Not everybody likes these kinds of movies. But criticizing this movie, or any movie, because it doesn't do a good enough job of "telling a story" or maintaining a linear narrative with a clear beginning, middle, and end is like complaining that a Jackson Pollack painting is bad because it isn't a picture of anything identifiable. Or that a poem is bad because it doesn't rhyme.

Too much emphasis gets placed on a moviemaker's duty to tell the audience a story. As a friend suggested to me the other day, the concept of the "story" as the most important element of a movie is mostly a construct of big Hollywood studios. The story hooks in audiences, keeps them happily submerged in the reality of the movie for 100 minutes, and gives them a simple answer when their friends ask them what the movie was about. It's hard to say what The Life Aquatic is about, just like it's hard to say what all of Wes Anderson's other movies are about. The "story" is not the point of these movies. As the Underground Online reviewer writes, Anderson is committed to his vision, which each one of his movies clearly has. He writes, "Anderson may have more insight into the human condition than any other director working today. Our determination to protect and hide our feelings at any cost, our selfishness, our jealousies and our capability for overwhelming love - Anderson has explored and brilliantly presented - without judgment - all of these human traits in all of his films."

If you read a modernist poem, or look at a painting by Mark Rothko, it's often better not to try to figure out what each word is intended to symbolize or what the painting is depicting, but instead just let the overall impression of the work wash over you. I think Wes Anderson movies can be like that: a bunch of weird little moments that add up to something bigger than the pieces. Which is strange in the case of The Life Aquatic, because the movie is actually very structured, with numbered subject headings announcing each new episodic scene. Despite this, the movie does not follow any traditional narrative structure, and if you look for one, you'll probably be confused, and come out saying that Wes Anderson doesn't know how to tell a story.

But a few scenes in which not much actually happens (like the one in which Bill Murray walks along the long deck of the ship, lighting a cigarette, while "Life On Mars?" plays on the soundtrack) are the most successful moments of the movie, and left me with that warm, glowing fondness for humanity that Anderson's movies generally produce. If you want to have a story told to you, call your mom and ask her to tuck you in with a nice children's book. Otherwise, go see movies like this one.

*As an aside, the Cinecitta sets in this movie are just as stylized and awesome as you would hope for.

categories: Culture, Media, Movies
posted by amy at 12:33 PM | #