I'm not sure about Wes Anderson. I find the enforced 'quirkiness' in his movies too calculated and deliberate. Every minor detail exists to congratulate itself and for self-congratulating Anderson-fans to congratulate themselves. Nevertheless, I approached the Life Aquatic with an open mind and in many ways found myself rewarded. It feels like Anderson's most cinematic film to date and touches on themes that - at points - seem genuinely profound.
Midway through the film, Ned Plimpton (Owen Wilson) confronts his newly discovered father saying, 'You don't know me, you don't want to know me... I'm just a character in your stupid film.' This is a though-provoking moment which points directly to Zizzou's own personal shortcomings. For Zizzou, life is not about authentic moments (the death of a friend, the reunion with a son), but how those moments can be captured and translated into film. The presence of an editing facility on his boat means that his reality is continually tinkered with. Giving detailed instructions to sound and video editors, Zizzou scrupulously converts events into narrative. This leads Zizzou into a kind of unreality: obsessing over the minutiae of recording of events, events lose any meaning.
As well as personal failures, his approach simultaneously leads to creative decay. When the reporter, Jane Winslett-Richardson (Cate Blanchett) suggests that Zizzou's recent work is slightly fake, he pulls out a gun. Nevertheless, this issue of authenticity versus filmed reality is no more than a conceit - Ned and his father's ultimate reconciliation is not convincingly played out, nor is the moment of Zizzou's artistic epiphany that eventually earns him critical acclaim. I suspect it's because Anderson sympathises with Zizzou as a film-maker. Anderson, like Zizzou, is obsessed with the potential of editing (as when the sound cuts out to show the death of an insect) - emotional content usually serves as narrative padding. For me, Anderson is ultimately too partial to self-congratulating references, like a mother reading Proust to her unborn child.
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