About Wes Anderson:
After studying at the St. John's High School in Houston, the
young Wes Anderson obtained a degree in philosophy from the University of
Texas. Crazy about cinema, he made several short movies, filming with his Super
8 camera, which left him with an early learning of film editing.
After being denied entry to Columbia University to study
film, he begins to write and make a small film of less than a quarter of an
hour that will later become a feature film, that’s how Bottle Rocket (1996) is
born, his first feature film, with Luke and Owen Wilson with whom Anderson is
going to have an enduring relationship (Luke has acted in all his films, while
Owen has also been his co-writer).
In 1998, his second film, Rushmore, co-written by Anderson
and Owen, was well received by critics and its director was seen as one of the
new hopes of American independent cinema. Starring Bill Murray, this film marks
the debut of indie star Jason Schwartzman.
In 2001, Anderson made his third film, The Royal Tenenbaums,
with a luxury casting made up of Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Ben Stiller and
Gwyneth Paltrow.
In The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, 2004, he returns with
his fetish actor, Bill Murray, turned into a sailor obsessed with capturing and
killing a jaguar shark.
In his films, Anderson has established a point of view full
of humor and at the same time deeply human about modern life and relationships.
Each of his widely popular comedies has undertaken the recurring themes of
aspirations, misfits, family, love and fatality. His fourth film takes these
same themes to a whole new territory when Anderson simultaneously embarks on a
marine adventure with abundant chases, shootings, lurking sharks and underwater
wonders.
Anderson's scripts always arise from an intimate personal
experience and in the center of Aquatic Life there is another character very
dear to Anderson: Steve Zissou, a world famous oceanographer who is both
comically familiar and totally unique.
For a long time fascinated by aquatic films and underwater
life in general, Anderson had always wanted to make a film staged on a ship in
the world of film adventures. "This is a movie I've been thinking about
for fourteen years," he says. "I was always fascinated by this
strange and amazing character that creates a kind of eccentric family in the
middle of the sea"
Steve Zissou (Bill Murray) is an oceanographer and
documentary filmmaker whose films about the aquatic world had some success in
the past, but have now lost popularity, plunging Sizzou into a serious
depression. However, the death of a close friend between the jaws of the
mythical "Jaguar Shark", gives new strength to Sizzou, who decides to
mount a final expedition to locate and destroy the jaguar shark, and in this
way avenging the death of his friend. And so, aboard the ship
"Belafonte", he embarks on the adventure along with his strange crew,
which includes Jane (Cate Blanchett), a bitter reporter, and Ned (Owen Wilson),
who could be Zissou's son. On the way, of course, strange adventures await
them, ranging from a pirate attack to the rescue of an eternal rival and
perhaps a confrontation with the fierce jaguar shark.
Wes Anderson is such a rare guy - as well as his cinema -
that he really requires a certain and positive mood. In this particular film I
understood once and for all his sense of humor. That inhuman coldness with
which his characters face the majority of the absurd situations of the plot,
something that brutally enhances those very few moments in which the shell is
removed and reveals their emotions. I have laughed openly with Bill Murray
facing shots with the most bungling pirates that I remember seeing on the screen
with the diver's helmet and built-in music. I love the wonderful character of
Willem Dafoe with some simply different and hilarious gags ("the
scientific motive to kill the animal?"; "... revenge").
Bill Murray is perfect in his role. Again, it's Bill Murray.
Only he can do this. The ensemble cast is, in addition to varied, very rich:
the confident and imposing Anjelica Houston, that dawned Jeff Goldblum, the
sporadic but priceless Michael Gambon or a Cate Blanchett that transmits all
the nervous fragility of her character in a very precise way. It is also one of
the few characters that never hide their emotions, and this brings the audience
closer.
Visually I love the look Anderson gets; from their usual
camera sweeps, fast and accurate, to their arrogant colors, going through those
sea creatures as artificial as they are delicious, who find their climax in the
beautiful final sequence, with the commented jaguar shark.
Everything is happening along the way, including the death
of Wilson's character, filmed in a way as different and surprising as
effective. It is, first and foremost, something new, such a different way of
explaining what is happening through images.
Finally, Anderson has conquered me. I already liked The
Tenenbaums, although I was not as excited. But Life aquatic goes further; It is
freer, has more flight, and is totally irreverent.
Note: One of my favorite moments of the film is when Zissou ask his intern:
Zissou: Intern give me a Campari.
Intern: On the rocks?
Zissou makes the hand gesture you see on the image above.
About the Production
In the script by Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach, Steve
Zissou's ship, the Belafonte, essentially becomes another character in the
film. From its colorful laboratory and equipped kitchen, to its research
library, edition room and dream “observation bubble”, the ship seems to reflect
the original spirit of the whole day. Production began looking for a boat with
an original shape and style. "It was almost like a cast selection,"
says production designer Mark Friedberg. “The search for the ship was an
adventure. Wes was very specific about the type of ship he wanted — it had to
be from the time of World War II, it had to be a minesweeper, it had to be 50
meters long, and to some extent, it had to remind us of Cousteau's “Calypso."
After months of tracking the seas, the production found a
50-year-old minesweeper in South Africa, which with lots of difficulty took the
production from Capetown to Rome. That ship remained intact for many of the
outdoor sequences but was equipped to turn it into an oceanographic research
ship, complete with towers, an observation deck and a very bright paint.
Meanwhile, a very similar second ship was acquired to be dismantled and used to
dress the stage.
"As for the interior of the ship, we wanted it to
reflect Zissou, an insecure man about the direction of his life at this time,
so that everything in this world is built and merged," says Friedberg.
“When we started, we were wondering, if this story is about a real man facing
his son or is it a fable, a cheerful comedy — and the answer was that it is all
this, and it had to be reflected in the design.
From the beginning, Anderson knew that he wanted the public
to see the Belafonte for the first time with the view of a cross section of a
model, open to reveal all its program inside. So the design team built half a
ship longitudinally so that the camera and the technical team could move in a straight
line from room to room.
"Since the real ship is built of metal, we couldn't
move walls easily, so we rebuilt what we saw inside the ship on stage,"
Friedberg explains. “Wes wanted to film the ship in its entirety simply by
moving a crane around the first room for the first scene the ship is introduced.
He wanted to use only real stages and very little of digital compounds or
effects. There is a great sense of humor and fluidity, and Wes had everything
planned with great precision.”
“Filming the scene was a lot of fun,” says Anderson. “We had
all the actors walking around like a colony of ants and the lights are changing
and the cameras are moving, and it was very exciting because none of us had
done something similar. The stage was more like a museum piece than a recording
stage— people continually went to see it. ”
The stage in the middle of the Belafonte, three stories
high, it was built, like most stages, on the lot of the legendary Cinecitta
Studios in Italy, with its famous artists and craftsmen. “We chose Italy
because it had everything we were looking for — it is on the water, it has
Cinecitta where all the Fellini films have been made, and it is the
Mediterranean, so it has that island sensibility,” says Friedberg.
Barry Mendel adds: "Filming in Italy has a very
specific flavor, and I think that some of that European sensitivity of handmade
crafts has become part of the unique structure of the film."
The stages were one thing, but the cast and the technical
team took a lot of getting used to the real ship used as the Belafonte. For
many, the day of its presentation came on a one-day visit in which Wes Anderson
hoped to film some scenes from the Team Zissou documentary. “We went to this small
volcanic island, and the sea was very rough and almost everyone got dizzy - and
we still had a great time,” he recalls. “We had the opportunity to meet each
other, and when you are on a ship like that, it becomes very intimate. There
are no barriers anymore. And what I find very interesting is that people become
very emotional about the Belafonte, they feel a great loyalty. ”
The production designer also created Zissou's house on
Pescespada Island in Italy, complete with a 12th-century castle, a pool with a
killer whale (the whale is added through a rear projection), a landing platform
for the seaplane and a very important ping pong table. "The theme for the
Zissou enclosure was that we should have a feeling of 'I don't want to grow
up,'" says Friedberg. “Pescespada Island was an extraordinary setting,
very different from everything I've ever seen,” summarizes Mendel.
Meanwhile, in contrast to the Belafonte is Hennessey's ship,
the super rival of Steve Zissou, forged as one of the most modern research
ships in the world, in which no expense has been repaired. For this ship, the
production used a NATO research ship, The Elite, which proved to be the
antithesis of the Belafonte. “It was totally the opposite of what we created
for Steve Zissou — extremely clean, very structured and high-tech,” says Mark
Friedberg. "It was a totally different world."
Another key element of the Belafonte is the concept of submersible
Deep Search — previously having received the name of one of Steve Zissou's
former loves — in which the team finally heads to the depths of the sea in
search of the jaguar shark. The mini submarine was built of iron and fiberglass
by an Italian team, with propellers and lights that actually worked.
“The taking of the submarine was really an incredible scene
of filming because we had the entire cast, with the exception of Owen, locked
in the back of this tiny stage. It was designed so that they could enter
quickly and could not leave, which really sets the mood for the scene, says
Anderson. "There was a terrifying feeling of going into the unknown."
