The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
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Short description
Steve Zissou is a famous oceanographer and documentary filmmaker whose latest expedition ends in disaster when his longtime partner is killed by a shark no one has seen before. At a press conference, Zissou announces that he intends to hunt the creature down. He assembles a crew that includes his estranged wife Eleanor, a pregnant journalist named Jane Winslett-Richardson, and Ned Plimpton, a young man who may or may not be his son. Their voyage brings pirates, a mutiny, and encounters with figures from Zissou's past, among them his rival Alistair Hennessey.
Wes Anderson directed the film from a screenplay he wrote with Noah Baumbach, and it was produced by Scott Rudin, Anderson and Barry Mendel. It was Anderson's fifth film as director, following The Royal Tenenbaums and preceding The Darjeeling Limited. Bill Murray plays Zissou, with Owen Wilson, Cate Blanchett, Anjelica Huston, Willem Dafoe and Jeff Goldblum in supporting roles; 77 cast members and 150 crew are credited.
Released in December 2004, the film cost about 50 million dollars to make and took roughly 35 million dollars worldwide, so it did not recoup its budget at the box office. Audience response has been favourable: it holds 7.2 out of 10 on IMDb from around 221,000 votes and 7.1 out of 10 on TMDB. A critics' rating of 6.3 out of 10 from 224 reviews places it below the audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- When Kate Blanchett was preparing to put on a prosthetic belly (as her character was expecting a child), she suddenly fainted. The actress herself was surprised, as she is not prone to this. A few days later, she found out that she was indeed pregnant.
- The shark model was almost 2.5 meters long. There were manual controls for swimming.
- Cate Blanchett did not rehearse the scene with the night jellyfish (when she first appears on screen) in order to add spontaneity to the episode.
- The film's plot is a parodic variation of Herman Melville's "Moby Dick".
- Adidas released sneakers that exactly replicate the shoes worn by Steve Zissou (Bill Murray).
- Jane is reading Marcel Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time” aloud to her child.
- During filming, Bill Murray became a certified scuba diver, spending over 40 hours underwater.
- Director and screenwriter Wes Anderson reviewed many films with a nautical theme, trying to understand how to depict sea turbulence. It turned out that Carroll Ballard's adventure film “The Black Stallion” (1979) had one scene filmed with a swaying camera, and Anderson also included a scene filmed with a rocking camera in his film.
- The red hats worn by the characters directly allude to Jacques Yves Cousteau, the famous underwater explorer and filmmaker, whose work the film is dedicated to.
- Bud Cort believed that when pirates kidnapped his character, he should lose about 20 kilograms (or a little more). Director, screenwriter, and producer Wes Anderson didn't like this, but Cort insisted and actually lost more than 20 kilograms.
- Matthew Gray Gubler, who played one of the supporting roles, suffered a leg injury during filming (and the take with his fall was ultimately included in the final cut). Gubler always wears mismatched socks, but on that day he wore a pair for the first time in several years, which he now attributes to the fall and its consequences.
- The original script stipulated that the pirates were inhabitants of Indonesia, but the film was shot in Italy, where there were not many Indonesians, so the pirates were made Filipinos.
- Gwyneth Paltrow was initially cast in the role of Jane Winslet-Richardson, but she was unable to participate in the filming due to commitments to other projects. Nicole Kidman expressed interest in the project, and Wes Anderson cast her, but Kidman also had scheduling conflicts, and the role went to Julianne Moore, but ultimately it was Kate Blanchett who played it. According to Anderson, the choice of the heroine's surname was influenced by the surname of actress Kate Winslet.
- Pelé Dos Santos (Seu Jorge) sings David Bowie songs in Portuguese. Jorge became so famous after the film that he even released a separate album of songs featured in it – “The Life Aquatic Featuring Seu Jorge”.
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