The Life Aquatic

The film that we watched in class on Wednesday, The Life Aquatic, was a little bit different than my taste. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it. After discussing how many different genres there are I came up with a combination of two that this film could fall under; documentary, and romantic comedy. Examples to support these claims were present throughout the entire movie.

Throughout the whole movie a love story is developing between Ned and Jane. Steve does not want Ned to have much contact with Jane because he believes her to be a snitch. The two end up in bed together though in one scene. The writers made it a comedy by throwing in a lot of one-liners and quick scenes that are totally irrelevant. Before Zissou sets out on his mission to hunt the shark there is a scene at his house, which is totally out of place, when he feeds his killer whale, and then the scene flashes off. Even though it has absolutely nothing to do with the context of what was previously going on it brings a laugh to the viewer.

The next genre is documentary. This is pretty self-explanatory, as the whole movie is a documentary itself. Examples that show it is a documentary are present throughout the whole film. The camera shows other cameras filming Zissou as he and his crew goes on many different missions. One time it shows Zissou getting mad at his crew because the camera man cut before he was done. This was the scene when Zissou and his new "son," Ned, were standing on the beach with the glowing jellyfish. The whole film was about the crew going to find this "jaguar" shark, making it a documentary.