Thoughts
The Q Journal
Monday, October 19, 2015
I had never really considered the possibility that I would be capable of writing something worthy of publication until I was offered the opportunity. One of my tutors requested the inclusion of an academic review I wrote framing Wes Anderson's "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" in lieu of Nichomachean ethics for a new initiative called The Q Journal, which features exemplar essays for the perusal of students at the University of Exeter. Needless to say, to have somebody ask me if they can publish my work was so flattering and something I was not going to pass by, despite the subsequent difficulties it caused due to a very poorly laptop. I'm quite excited about this so please excuse the clumsy phrasing and any other glaringly obvious mistakes you might come across!
I have attached a copy of the article below as well as providing a link to the PDF format in which it can be found originally.
Review: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
Chris Robé postulates that Wes Anderson’s ‘films embody a melancholic structure
whereby loss serves as an absent presence, not often directly addressed but nonetheless
significantly influencing both narrative momentum and mise-en-scène’ (107). Indeed, loss
permeates Anderson’s third film, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), emblematised
by the deaths of Esteban du Plantier (Seymour Cassell) – Steve Zissou’s (Bill Murray)
‘chief diver… [and] closest colleague for years’ (Life Aquatic 01.50) - and Edward “Ned”
Plimpton (Owen Wilson), his illegitimate long-lost son. Despite complaints at a distinct lack of
narrative momentum from reviewers such as Philip French and Peter Bradshaw, Life Aquatic
is constructed through a notion of balance or ‘justice’ (Aristotle 80), which illuminates the
critical nature of its stasis. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics outlines how vital proportion is in
cultivating justice, as recalled in Anderson’s Life Aquatic through the proportionate deaths of
Esteban and Ned. Both accidental, Esteban’s death unbalances the character of Zissou,
which thus necessitates the death of Ned in order to return him to a sense of equilibrium. The
importance of finalising the oscillation is to nurture Zissou as accessible, imbuing the
audience with sympathy for a grieving man beyond the cinematic construction of character.
Life Aquatic is, indubitably, a revenge narrative; when asked ‘What is next for Team
Zissou?’, Zissou replies with his intention to hunt the ‘jaguar shark’ solely for the purpose of
‘revenge’ (Life Aquatic 05.02), with the premise of purging his pain (Robé 111). The deadpan
delivery of the line instigates the double audiences’ (both of Anderson’s real film and Zissou’s
fictitious film premiere) unease with the emotional stability of the character. Retribution, then,
forms the basis for Zissou’s next mission, which seeks to avenge in homage to his lost
companion, while additionally reviving Zissou’s failing career as a documentary-maker.
Anderson referenced Jacques Cousteau as an inspirational source, dedicating the film to his
memory. Furthermore, Anderson remembers Cousteau’s impressive stature as ‘this kind
of superhero scientist, but also this star’: a status to which the fictional Zissou unknowingly aspires (Seitz 166). Yet his quest for vengeance, along with his financial difficulties and
technological shortcomings, problematises his role as a serious oceanographer and
filmmaker, reverting Zissou into a frustratingly juvenile and fundamentally out-of-touch
character. Nevertheless, Aristotelian philosophy manifests in Zissou’s venture: ‘men seek to
return…evil for evil,…[I]t is by exchange that [justice] holds together’ (88). It is in Zissou’s
sheer determination to kill the jaguar shark that Life Aquatic overtly demonstrates his
reflection of Nicomachean ethics by attempting to secure justice for Esteban.
Life Aquatic opens with Zissou showing his latest documentary where he is flailing in
the sea, repeatedly screaming ‘Esteban!’ (03.37), crystallising the revenge narrative for the
forthcoming diegesis. In perhaps one of the most powerful moments in the film, Murray
foregrounds the utter sorrow that Zissou feels for the death of his friend through his frantic,
hoarse utterances. His immediate shock response creates panic and fear for the characters
and audience alike, encouraging us to emotionally invest in Zissou’s trauma. The events
preceding this incident frame the relationship between Zissou and du Plantier as somewhat
paternal, where Zissou has his arm around the slightly shorter du Plantier and kisses his
head fondly prior to entering the water together. Interestingly this interaction juxtaposes
Zissou’s relationship with his “maybe-son” Ned (Woodhouse), with whom he struggles to
foster a rapport in the face of vengeance (Robé 112). The affection with which Zissou regards
du Plantier cannot be transposed onto his son after Esteban’s death, despite his obligatory
paternal role. It is in this way that Zissou is portrayed as out of balance; his emotional
progress and thereby his grieving process is blocked by his inability to see past chasing
retribution.
Directly mirroring the death of Esteban, the helicopter crash that ends this cycle of
revenge begins with the sighting of the ‘fluorescent snapper’ fish (98.17), presumably
swimming away from the jaguar shark that ate Zissou’s friend. Foreshadowed by the same
ominous streaks of red water washing over the camera, Zissou re-enacts the panic from the
earlier scene with his distressed calls for Ned (99.01), paralleling his concern if not as a father,
but as a friend. Contrastingly, the scene is characterised by an unnerving sense of calm; Zissou accepts the inevitability of his second loss and ‘only once dead can Ned be any kind of
son’ (Gooch 46). However, unlike his experience with Esteban, Zissou is permitted some
involvement in protecting his putative son, exhibited by placing his arm across Ned’s chest
as though attempting to soften the fall (98.42). This is the first incident in which Zissou
accepts his responsibility as a father, albeit a little too late. Ned must die to implement
Aristotle’s method of justice: ‘justice is a kind of mean…because it relates to an intermediate
amount, while injustice relates to the extremes’ (90). Without Ned’s death, Zissou would have
remained in limbo, unable to access his repressed emotions due to the injustice of Esteban’s
death, thereby perpetually ‘rejecting mourning’ (Robé 110). Zissou’s purposeful hunt for the
jaguar shark, and therefore his attempt to enact justice, fails because he tries to transcend
biological boundaries, figuring himself as the predator, subverting the jaguar shark as prey:
‘plan[ning] to blow up the jaguar shark with dynamite to…symbolically reinstate the species
divide’ (Shackelford 205). The reversal of roles cannot be procured, however, because the
jaguar shark is already culpable for a human death, reasserting its status as the predator.
Zissou’s attempts to ‘stabilize and instrumentalize human relations to nonhuman animals
[thus] significantly destabilizes the boundaries they intended to secure’ (Shackelford 200).
Upon the final encounter with the jaguar shark (107.56), an eight- foot stop motion puppet, it
is ultimately depicted as ‘“beautiful” in its massiveness and as a memorial to Esteban and
Ned’ (Colatrella 90), facilitating Zissou’s epiphanic moment. The pursuit of revenge is finally
eradicated because justice has been realised through the reciprocal deaths, symbolised by
the serene confrontation with the jaguar shark.
Robé argues that ‘Anderson’s protagonists transform their losses into recuperative,
performative actions, a[n] endless “game” in which they unconsciously seek revenge on
those who have abandoned them’ (106), corresponding with Browning’s assertion that ‘the
emotional validity of the shark attack is stated rather than shown’ (54). Indeed, as a
‘dyspeptic, depressive documentary filmmaker’ and as a human being (Past 53), Zissou
is fissured by Esteban’s loss, which throws him into stagnancy until the second death
stabilises the character. Anderson’s Life Aquatic successfully clarifies Nicomachean ethics, evinced by the proportionate nature of the film’s diegesis. Zissou’s eventual understanding of
the fruitlessness of vengeance clarifies his status as an ultimately sympathetic character,
ending Life Aquatic with a satisfactory sense of balance.
KATIE YATES
(University of Exeter)
Works Cited
Anderson, Wes, dir. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Touchstone Pictures, 2004. DVD.
Aristotle. The Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. David Ross. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2009. Print.
Browning, Mark. Wes Anderson: Why His Movies Matter. Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2011. Print.
Colatrella, Carol. ‘The Life Aquatic of Melville, Cousteau, and Zissou at Sea.’ Leviathan
11.3 (2009): 79-90. Web. Project Muse. 1 Feb. 2015.
Gooch, Joshua. ‘Making a Go of It: Paternity and Prohibition in the Films of Wes Anderson.’
Cinema Journal 47.1 (2007): 26-48. Web. Project Muse. 1 Feb. 2015.
Past, Elena. ‘Lives Aquatic: Mediterranean Cinema and an Ethics of Underwater Existence.’
Cinema Journal 48.3 (2009): 52-65. Web. Project Muse. 1 Feb. 2015.
135
Robé, Chris. ‘“Because I Hate Fathers, and I Never Wanted to Be One”: Wes Anderson,
Entitled Masculinity, and the “Crisis” of the Patriarch.’ Millennial Masculinity: Men in
Contemporary American Cinema. Ed. Timothy Shary. Michigan: Wayne State University
Press, 2013. 101-121. Print.
Seitz, Matt Zoller. ‘The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou: An Interview.’ The Wes Anderson
Collection. Ed. Matt Zoller Seitz. New York: Abrams, 2013. 165-93. Print.
Shackelford, Laura. ‘Systems Thinking in The Life Aquatic and Moonrise Kingdom.’ The
Films of Wes Anderson: Critical Essays on an Indiewood Icon. Ed. Peter C. Kunze. New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 199-213. Print.
Woodhouse, Simon. ‘The Life Aquatic with Steven Zissou.’ Flikreport. N.p. 1 Nov. 2006.
Web. 21 Feb. 2015.
Works Consulted
Bradshaw, Peter. ‘The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.’ The Guardian 18 Feb. 2005. Web. 28
Feb. 2015.
French, Philip. ‘Something In The Water.’ The Guardian 20 Feb. 2005. Web. 28 Feb. 2015.
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