Wes Anderson’s previous movie, The Royal Tenenbaums, was the occasion for my single contribution to film theory, which goes like this: for a film narrative to be satisfying, a sad ending has to be inevitable, and a happy ending has to be earned.
I make the point because the happy ending in The Royal Tenenbaums was so obviously unearned. But perhaps that was to be expected in a movie with as little substance as your average episode of a sitcom — and with as facile an ability to resolve all its issues in the 30 seconds before the end credits. What misled one into thinking it might be different was the movie’s garish-Gothic style, which made it seem offbeat and unusual. That, of course, turned out to be mere window dressing.
The same goes for Anderson’s new film, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. What’s good about it is the window dressing; the rest is bad. And the comparison with The Royal Tenenbaums is apposite because it’s basically the same movie, except with an underwater twist. Instead of Gene Hackman playing the bad dad, we have Bill Murray. He’s the Steve Zissou of the title, which parodies the mini-films Zissou makes about his maritime exploits. Zissou is a sort of Jacques Cousteau figure, but American, and without the charm or the mystique.
Anderson’s main theme and form here are the same as those of The Royal Tenenbaums. We have a dysfunctional extended-family group, lorded over by an eccentric, irresponsible, egotistic but allegedly charismatic father figure. This father figure does all sorts of silly and wicked things, but will get redeemed in the end in the most implausible and unsatisfying manner possible. We even have, just like in the previous film, Anjelica Huston playing the matriarch of the clan. She’s the only one of them with any dignity.
That Zissou’s son figure (Owen Wilson) may not be his real son, and that the members of this familial group are not all related by blood, are irrelevant. It’s the same story underneath the stylish, cartoony veneer. Anderson seems to be obsessed with the idea of redeeming bad dads. The redemption, as before, is risibly meaningless; so much for the happy ending. But, wait, there’s more! Before the happy ending, there is even a bit of an unhappy ending, too. One of the main characters dies — except that the movie glosses over that with barely a crocodile tear. Are we meant to feel something or aren’t we?
Are we meant, perhaps, to laugh? There are signs that The Life Aquatic is going as a comedy, in which case it belongs to that new genre, of which Anderson seems a master — the comedy without a sense of humour.