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| The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) |
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Director: Release Date: 25 December 2004 (USA)
Plot (via Wikipedia): Zissou’s crew aboard his research vessel Belafonte includes Pelé dos Santos (Seu Jorge), a safety expert and Brazilian musician who sings David Bowie songs in Portuguese; Klaus Daimler (Willem Dafoe), a lovable German second-in-command who views Zissou and Esteban as father figures and feels threatened by Zissou’s possible son, Ned Plimpton (Owen Wilson). Minor crew members include Vikram Ray (Waris Ahluwalia), a Sikh cameraman, described in Zissou’s featured film documentary as a man “born on the Ganges”; Bobby Ogata (Niels Koizumi), Team Zissou’s frogman who is usually seen eating; Vladimir Wolodarsky (Noah Taylor), crew experimentator and original score composer; Renzo Pietro (Pawel Wdowczak), screen editor; and Anne-Marie Sakowitz (Robyn Cohen), a usually topless script girl. Zissou’s crew also include a pack of unpaid college interns from the University of North Alaska. Ned is a polite, innocent and childlike Southern gentleman whose mother has recently died. He believes that Zissou is his father and, after meeting Zissou at a film premiere, takes a break from his job as an airline pilot in Kentucky to join the Zissou crew. As no one else will finance the latest documentary, Ned agrees to finance the new film with his inheritance. Zissou is also followed around by a reporter, and fan, Jane Winslett-Richardson (Cate Blanchett). She is also pregnant with her married boss’s child. She eventually falls in love with Ned and, as a result, a rivalry develops between Ned and Zissou, because Zissou is himself infatuated with Jane. On their mission to find the Jaguar Shark, the Belafonte crew has to deal with a murderous attack, kidnapping and theft by pirates. Sakowitz, along with the interns, jump ship after the pirate raid. The interns who leave only get incompletes for this “course.” The Belafonte crew launch their own subsequent sneak attack on the pirates in order to retrieve their money and rescue a “bond company stooge” (Bud Cort) who had been hired by Zissou’s producer Oseary Drakoulias (Michael Gambon). They also discover and rescue Zissou’s nemesis, Alistair Hennessey (Jeff Goldblum). Hennessey is the opposite of Zissou: successful, suave, rich, and “part-gay.” Zissou also reunites with his wife Eleanor (Anjelica Huston) who was once married to Hennessey. While searching for the Jaguar Shark, the Belafonte’s helicopter crashes, injuring Zissou and fatally wounding Ned. Although Eleanor reveals that Zissou is actually sterile and therefore Ned could not have been his son, Steve and Ned had become as close as a real father and son. Zissou finally tracks down the shark but decides not to kill it, both because of its beauty and his lack of dynamite. Viewing the shark finally validates an existence that Zissou himself had feared might have become meaningless. Eleanor is moved by this and falls in love with Zissou all over again. The finished documentary “film-within-a-film” is a hit, and Zissou wins an award, regaining respect worldwide, though his losses haunt him even as he gains what once seemed lost. The newest member of the team shown at the end of the film is Klaus’s nephew, Werner, a young Zissou fan who briefly appears at the beginning of the film and who seems to represent another surrogate son.
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