The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

You ever get the feeling a film was made after somebody thought up a great name? This film has a great name. The film has some thoroughly great actors. This film has an enormously great and creative director at its helm, but what this film lacks is substance. It's too desperately thrown together. “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou; yeah mate, sounds good. What's it about?” The answer: “I don't know.”

What it's actually about isn't too bad. Zissou, whose life is, admittedly, reasonably aquatic, premiers his latest documentary. Happily, this features his best friend of many years being torn to shreds by a jaguar shark (or something; he thinks it was a jaguar shark) and Zissou's subsequent vow for revenge. All this is going pretty poorly, along with the collective reception of his latest films, but he happens upon the man who's probably his son and collects him along for the journey. The $200,000-odd his (probably) son inherited from his own (definitely) mother doesn't hurt when the financiers fall through, and Zissou takes to the high seas to win back his dignity, or the shark, or his wife, or Cate Blanchett, or something.

To the credit of the writers Zissou knows about as much as we do about what he hopes to gain from all this, but it would be nice to have a little direction in a scripted feature film. In the organised universe of Wes Anderson, dreams — even little ones — are attacked with singleminded determination. That's what make them special. Max Fischer is going to get the girl by saving Latin classes, and when he doesn't he goes about fixing things even more outlandishly (with an aquarium). Suzy and Sam are running away to start a new life together, although they're not really because they are children (they think they are, and that's the main thing). So what the hell is Steve Zissou doing?

It kind of kicks me in the stomach to see a film tile as great as The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou wasted. It's like Orson Welles' career, and the reason I won't read Atlas Shrugged; you shouldn't open with something you can't beat. I think we learnt today that the only way to succeed is to start at the end and work your way forwards to the beginning. There's a stellar little novel about that and, let me tell you, it has a terrible title.

That's 2004's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, directed by Wes Anderson and starring Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Anjelica Huston and Cate Blanchett.

 

Rushmore

Honestly, I flush in shame to think how behind on Wes Anderson I am. I only got started with Fantastic Mr. Fox, but I want points for that being my first date. I think the boy told me he wanted a gun license. I don't know if this is more or less alarming in NRA-free Australia. In any case we didn't see each other again.

Rushmore ticks a lot of boxes and leaves me a little biased. Jason Schwartzman, for one, and Bill Murray, and Mr. Anderson and berets. The story focuses around the character of the former, a teenage scholarship student of that most prestigious Rushmore Academy, whose enthusiasm for calligraphy and bee-keeping and joining in keeps him from achieving academically. But he persistently means well, even when he befriends the pretty young widowed first grade teacher, although he does fall in love with her and end up ruining his own life, as well as hers and Bill Murray's, at least for a bit. Rushmore falls very certainly and comfortably into the coming-of-age genre and doesn't attempt to press any envelopes, but charms its way into individuality instead in a very Wes Andersonish sort of way.

I challenge you to dislike this film. It's quite possible to be unenthusiastic about it, especially when you compare it to the director's recent offerings. (Can we talk about Moonrise Kingdom? Is this an excuse to bring up Moonrise Kingdom again? Oh please!) But that indescribable, disarming sweetness, the hazy, stylised believability of it all, gives it that edge typical of most all of Wes Anderson films. It feels so close to being possible, so very nearly perfectly relatable, that you could almost assimilate it into your own life and not feel the bump. It's not a parallel universe; it's a teenage kid on his bike, a teenage kid having abuse hurled at him by a wounded Scot in a tree, a teenage kid being attacked by youngsters in Halloween dress on a cloudy day. This is the film you see shivering at the bus stop and offer the space underneath your umbrella to.

That's 1998's Rushmore, directed by Wes Anderson and starring Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Olivia Williams and Seymour Casse.