The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou vs The Royal Tenenbaums

Once in a while, I see a movie that is so original, so brilliant, so dry-witted and smart and beautifully rendered, I can't believe I don't like it more. The Life Aquatic was supposed to be my new favorite movie. I was supposed to laugh and cry and bug my friends about it for all of next year. And yet…and yet something about The Life Aquatic kept it at arm's length. It's good, and original, and visually breathtaking. The acting is fine, the writing is fine, and I liked it, honest I did. And yet.

The Life Aquatic follows the daring exploits of Steve Zissou, a Jacques Cousteau-type undersea adventurer and documentary filmmaker. Funded (and many say educated) by his wife Eleanor, Steve is joined by a small crew of varying talents, some college interns, and a topless script girl. He's soon joined by Ned (Owen Wilson) who may or may not be Steve's son, and Jane (Cate Blanchett) a British reporter profiling Steve for what he hopes is the cover of a big expedition magazine. The most distinctive members of Steve's crew are Klaus (Willem Dafoe) a highly-sensitive and highly-dedicated German who is Steve's biggest fan, and Pele (Seu Jorge), who provides a nice framing device for scenes by strumming a guitar and singing David Bowie songs in Portuguese. He does a Space Oddity that will break your heart.

In the beginning of the film, Steve is showing his latest documentary, which culminates with the slaughter of his best friend at the hands of a jaguar shark. We don't see the attack, just Steve freaking out as the water around him turns bloody. It's one of those unexpectedly emotional moments Wes Anderson likes to surprise us with. Up until this point, The Life Aquatic has been just as whimsical and quirky as you'd imagine, with title cards and high school filmstrip-style credits. There are touches like this throughout The Life Aquatic. Everything's labeled and categorized and pointed out for us. Much of it is really funny, like the limited edition Team Zissou Adidas. Zissou's boat seems ready to sink, but then we see the entire thing in a nifty cross-section, and we realize that inside it's pretty sweet. The fourth wall is removed for us, and Steve narrates a walk-through. Inside, the boat is amazing, with rooms for pretty much every need (including a science lab for experiments and a massage room). And, it's not an effect, but a complete set. At varying times in The Life Aquatic, characters move throughout the boat, from room to room and floor to floor, giving clear proof that it's a complete structure, and not a series of stages or sets.

Steve Zissou's qualifications, as a team leader, explorer, father, husband, friend and all-around human being are questionable, to put it mildly. He's moody, bigoted, possibly alcoholic, and prone to intense paranoia and jealousy. And, he might not be so bright. Bill Murray doesn't shy away from Zissou's foibles. He intensifies most of them, actually, and winds up endearing himself in the process. It's a great performance, even if it's not completely believable that any of these people would stick with Steve as long as they do. Eleanor leaves him early on, and we get a sense that she just as easily could have years ago. Anjelica Huston is exotic, mysterious and deadpan in The Life Aquatic, as she is in pretty much everything. When it's implied that she's the brains behind Team Zissou, we believe it. Huston is such a pro, and is the perfect foil for Murray. She earns one of the movie's biggest laughs simply by gesturing toward a spot on a map. And, as the easily-offended Klaus, Willem Dafoe is brilliant. Brilliant. The man has hardly made any comedies, but he's got timing like you wouldn't believe.

The Life Aquatic, though, is a little conflicted. Like Wes Anderson's other movies, it has sort of a found-item quality to it, as if it was made in the 19070s, and you've just now gotten around to watching it. Unlike Anderson's other movies, however, The Life Aquatic isn't aging as well. The adventure aspects of Steve's hunt for the shark that killed his friend are fun, and the visuals are incredible (The Life Aquatic's sea is populated with colorful, fictional underwater life that is simply astounding. Finding Nemo brought to life.) And the characters are original; Cate Blanchett's Jane is an odd, complex woman with an intense passion for reporting and/or underwater expeditions. She constantly seems on the verge of an emotion of great intensity, keeping her new associates on their toes.

But, The Life Aquatic has moments of drama, where we're not sure if it's genuine or not. Is something sly going to happen instead? Are we being tricked? There's a love triangle, and questions about two pregnancies, and broken marriages and friendships, but it all feels on the verge of irony, on the cusp of wacky. And The Life Aquatic is visited by two scenes of shocking violence, one bordering on terror. This is the high-seas, after all, and scary things can happen. We've got the Crayoned Sea Horse one second, and Scarface the next. The shoot-out scenes are fun, but seem imported from another movie. If the shocking scenes are just there to balance out the quirkier stuff, then that could mean that the shock is just to shock, and that the quirks are just to amuse, the latter of which has been way too meticulously created to be true. I have a feeling that a year from now, I'll have warmed up some to The Life Aquatic. It's certainly got the performances, the look, and the soundtrack of Wes Anderson's best. For now though, it's left me a little uneasy.

Royal Tenenbaum, like Steve Zissou, is a frustrating man. He's dishonest, rude, racist and cold to his family. At a crisis in his life, he's trying to learn from his mistakes. If he's not exactly succeeding, well, at least his new mistakes might start to bring his family a little peace.

I'm pretty sure The Royal Tenenbaums is my favorite movie. For a while, because I'm a guy, my favorite movie was Star Wars, and later, because I'm a guy, it was Pulp Fiction. But the fact is no movie actually moves me as much as The Royal Tenenbaums. Every frame seems so well taken care of, so tended to, so loved. Wes Anderson really put his heart into The Royal Tenenbaums. I can watch isolated scenes and laugh, or tear up, or simply marvel at how much is on the screen at any given time. Margo Tanenbaum walking slowly off the bus to These Days; Richie Tenenbaum looking himself in the eye and whispering “I'm going to kill myself tomorrow;” Royal and the twins rolling dice.

The Royal Tenenbaums, of course, is Wes Anderson's film following the lives of the Tenenbaum children: each gifted, each troubled, each in ill-fitting clothes and unhappy relationships. I love them. Once The Royal Tenenbaums gets going, as we're meeting each Tenenbaum child, it becomes a tribute to the gifted, lonely kids from Charles M. Schultz, J.D. Salinger, E.L. Konigsberg and others. It's not just Margo Tenenbaum, but Ruby Tuesday; not just Richie, but Jude; not just Chas, but Schroeder. The Tenenbaum kids seem out of touch with the times, each hovering around the age they started learning the truth about life: people will disappoint you, and you'll disappoint them, and there's nothing you can do about it. In other words, they're all about twelve, socially, despite their staggering IQs.

The Tenenbaum home, like Zissou's boat, is filled with details, mostly the kids' art on the walls. If ever there was a set I'd like to explore, it's the Tenenbaum house (followed closely by the Star Wars trash compactor, while wearing Storm Trooper armor.) Likewise, the costumes, hairstyles, cars and even pets seem carefully chosen.

I could go on about The Royal Tenenbaums for days; and if we're friends, you've probably been through that more than enough already. I'll leave you, instead, with my favorite scene, one that creates such a specific mood, I shouldn't have been surprised that The Life Aquatic never quite nailed it: Richie Tenenbaum has just come back from the emergency room after trying to commit suicide. Margo—his sad, nine-fingered, adopted sister—visits him in a tent, to look at his stitched wrists. They lie on the floor, and listen to the Rolling Stones, until Margo decides they're going to just have to be secretly in love. She Smiled Sweetly, and she smiles sweetly, and I can't stop watching.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou: B
The Royal Tenenbaums: A