What are they?
One of them has to be Cousteau’s Le Monde du Silence.
Which I’ve never been able to find. Thank you, though.
Are there others?
ISTR seeing it available on DVD a year or so ago. Only it’s in unsubtitled French, and I don’t speak French.
Obviously the primary inspiration for the film was The Undersea World Of Jacques Cousteau. The drawings we see at the beginning of the film are from the book Calypso. (I’m lucky enough to have a copy. It’s hard to find.) The denim shirts, dungarees and red tuques are also very similar to what the crew of Calypso wore.
I’ve only seen the The Life Aquatic once, but I didn’t like it that much. I think it’s because I was expecting something different. I’ll have to watch it again. In any case, Was the ship in the film a clone of Calypso?
That The Life Aquatic is inspired by Jacque Cousteau documentaries seems pretty apparent.
What I couldn’t understand is wherein lies the joke?
I think the joke was on me. A bunch of cool people decide to make a movie which is purposely unfunny simply to amuse themselves and if I’m cool enough I’d find it amusing that they’re being unamusing simply to amuse themselves at my expense. Or something.
My best friend sent the movie to me without comment. I watched it and wrote to her: “I’m sorry. But that movie sucked. I hated it. It sucks monkey balls. It sucks smelly monkey balls with oozing puss-filled herpes sores. Was there something there I didn’t get?”
She replied: “Oh good. We thought so too but were afraid we just didn’t get it.”
So what movies inspire that sort of aesthetic?
I liked the movie quite a bit. I didn’t go into it expecting an uproarious comedy, and it wasn’t. But whatever it was, it clicked with me.
I thought it was pretty dang brilliant.
levdrakon, you seem to be angry that a movie filled with jokes not involving smelly monkey balls with oozing puss-filled herpes sores went over your head. With the level of sophistication you’ve shown in this thread, I’m not at all surprised. I, however, loved the look and feel of the movie, and found it both hilarious and heartwrenching. If you’d like to further debate that, feel free to open your own thread. I would like to keep this one on topic.
Thank you.
Uh oh.
If its’s any consolation, I didn’t enjoy it either. I couldn’t finish watching it.
Well, the last scene where the crew walk together is an homage to the ending of The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai Across the 8th Dimension.
To me, all of the stop-motion fish are reminiscent of The Nightmare Before Christmas.
I’d be interested to know if the rescue mission scene where they’re in the silver wetsuits is inspired by any particular film or TV show.
Don’t forget Mike Nickhols. He is one reason why Wes Anderson began directing in the first place, with Anderson paying homage all the time. For instance, there is always one scene in a Wes Anderson movie where the character is underwater, as what happened in The Graduate.
I’m certainly glad you were able to sit there gazing lovingly at the wonderful aesthetics of the movie all the while chuckling knowingly at all the terribly, terribly sophisticated humor which clearly went straight over my slack-jawed open-mouthed slap-stick burlesque fart-joke loving head.
Please do carry on with your thread. I shan’t despoil your good thread further.
Adieu
But you had to get the last jab in, right? Not my fault you can’t appreciate good film. Go be sore about it elsewhere.
Translation: “I didn’t get it, and I’m angry about it.”
I loved it. Sorry you didn’t.
Heh.
I loved this film, but I can see why others wouldn’t. It’s slightly off kilter, like the writer and director had different ideas on what kind of film they were making (which, obviously, wasn’t the case here). I believe Ebert called it “a farce played at the pace of a funeral dirge”. That’s about it.
It’s about a man in an utterly absurd and fantastic life, having a depressive breakdown. I can see where the conflict would grate on some viewers. I just thought it made it a more interesting film.
Then again, in the interest of full disclosure, I also thought Wes Anderson’s American Express commercial was brilliant. The guy’s my favorite American director by far.
I thought much of the animation was inspired by the wonderul work of Czech animator Karel Zeman. Many of his feature length films deal with explorers and voyages of discovery, and the brightly-colored, fantastical creatures and environs wouldn’t be out-of-place in many of his films (shorts and features). Definitely worth checking out if you get a chance (his body of work is generally hard to find).
I know that some of Anderson’s stlye and cinematography is influenced by the early 20th century photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue. In fact one of Lartigue’s frequent models was his brother Zissou.
As for the film itself I would not hesitate to say that it is near the top of the list of my favorite movies of all time. I have always seen it as a beautiful portrait of a man who is coming to grips with the fact that he is no longer good at the only thing he ever cared about and that he has nothing else to fall back on. His marrige is in shambles, he has never even met his son, and the only man who ever really understood him is dead.
I’m a big Wes Anderson fan, and I was very excited when this movie came out. When I saw it in the theater, I thought it was OK, but not nearly as good as The Royal Tennenbaums*. But when I got the DVD, I watched it again and enjoyed it a whole lot more. I watched it like three times in a week, and I liked it better every time. So maybe it’s one of those things that grow on you.
I will say that the one scene that still doesn’t work is when Zissou retakes his ship to the tune of “Search and Destroy.”