Wes Anderson is into 60s rock music and this movie is the equivalent to a psychedelic pop band’s strangest and most indulgent album. For everyone who thinks this should be tightened up, there’s someone who loves every weird thing about it. Both sides seem to agree on one point, at least: for a comedy, it’s awfully sad. This is a film about a journey that loses its way and Anderson is happy to get lost with it. The story is ostensibly about the hunt for a rare shark, but Anderson quickly bails on that to hang out with the characters, the most compelling of which is Bill Murray as a haggard old sea captain. He’s a man out of time, a maritime explorer who’s also a celebrity on the side due to his own trumped-up documentary films about his adventures. He’s a little bit Jacques Cousteau, a little bit Buffalo Bill Cody (who fashioned a similar industry of self-mythology via Wild West shows and dime novels back in the late 19th century), and a whole lot of depressed for reasons that have little to do with saltwater and fish. This is a character study of a character who does not wish to be studied… beyond his own fabrications about himself, at least. Murray’s Steve Zissou doesn’t let people in, but his ship pretty much says it all. It’s one man’s surreal inner landscape rendered three-dimensional. When Murray narrates a tour of the boat, he also gives us a tour of his inner psyche. It’s full of mementos of the dead, arcane libraries, old machines in need of repair and some things that make no damn sense at all. If you don’t mind spending a couple of hours there, this movie is for you.
It’s a fifty million dollar art film and, oh boy did it bomb. This thing got GREAT bad reviews (and by that I mean, bad reviews that make you want to see the movie.) Arguments still fly over this one. Naturally, a cult has emerged. It’s people who feel that this is the rawest expression of Wes Anderson’s vision. Or maybe they just love Bill Murray as perhaps his greatest cinematic sad sack. Whoever they are, I bet they’re people who also feel that The Beatles’ White Album is perfect as is. Don’t take anything off, not even “Revolution 9”.