The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
© James C. Hess
Having spent more than a few years creating humor and comedy I can say, without hesitation or exception, the only time humor and comedy properly work as they should is when you have the right and proper audience. That is, people who are ready and willing to laugh at just about anything. And everything.
But finding this particular audience--ah, there's the rub, especially nowadays when it is considered rude, ill-mannered, and Politically Incorrect to laugh, especially when undeniable misery and misfortune are involved.
That said misery and misfortune are brought about and wrought upon these deserving of such things is incidential. You musn't laugh. It's not nice.
Well, bully, then: Some times the only thing you can do is laugh. And laugh you should, because by way of the cathartic and theraputic qualities of laughter you come to appreciate and value more what it is you have, instead of what you don't have, and why it is better not to have certain things at all.
This may not come across as rational, but there is good reason for why that is: It isn't intended as such, and once you have understood that properly then you are in the proper state of mind and mood for a wonderful movie entitled "The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou", a decidedly and quite determinedly deranged, demented, deceptive, but perceptive and profound effort about an oceanographer who is quite deranged, demented, deceptive, but equally perceptive and profound.
Oh, by the way: Try not to be too distracted by the wonderous beauty often present in the film. If you are you will lose sight of what is going on, and you will probably miss the point of the film, which is to have fun despite misery and misfortune, helped along with substantial amounts of insanity and silliness in the persons of Steve Zissou (Bill Murrary), Ned Plimpton (Owen Wilson, in one of his better comedic turns), Eleanor Zissou (Anjelica Huston, whom we never see enough of on the silver screen), Klaus Daimler (Willem Dafoe), Alistair Hennessey (Jeff Jeff Goldblum, who should much more comedy, for he is so good at it), and others, equally and properly eccentric but colorful, unorthodox but memorable.
Now there is a question at hand: Why is Zissou the way he is? His behavior owes much to the loss of his beloved partner, who was eaten by a jaguar shark, which Zissou has decided he must find and kill.
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