Wes Anderson's new film, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, is sure to split both his fans and detractors.  While it contains some of the same quirky sensibilities and themes of family and togetherness as his previous two features, Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, there is a distinct sense that Anderson is trying to re-invent himself with this film.  Considerably darker, in both its plot and its tone, than any of his other works, there is often a sense of uneasiness when you realize that the dramatic moments are honest and realistic, no longer masked by Mothersbaugh's score or the tension cut short by a funny one-liner.  The story revolves around the escapades of the Jacques Cousteau-like documentarian Steve Zissou as he heads out to kill the shark that ate his friend.  The setup sounds like pure Wes Anderson, and while it is to some degree, he uses the premise to reflect on how he makes films and how audiences respond to them.  The striking similarities between Zissou and Anderson himself function as a tool for him to deconstruct his own persona while maintaining another one of his off-kilter, comical stories.  As a filmmaker, Zissou is lacking in confidence and struggling to have his latest film taken seriously, something Anderson is obviously doing here.  When Zissou asks of the audience "Why are they laughing?" after video footage of his friend being killed, Anderson is clearly asking his audience the same thing.  For the many people who watch a Wes Anderson just for laughs, The Life Aquatic may deliver more feelings of uneasiness since the humor is steeped in dramatic undertones and asks you to consider why you are laughing as you're watching it.

There is a scene about two-thirds of the way through where the crew, camera in hand, are running down a set of stairs.  Zissou falls flat on his back and when cutting the scene is mentioned, he replies "We're giving them the reality this time."  This is a moment where Anderson wants us to focus on how violence and mortality are dealt with in the film without any sugar-coating.  Bottle Rocket is the only previous film that had any remotely serious violence and while the guns were real, the films playfulness and the lightheartedness with which its characters were conceived give these scenes a light, cartoonish feel.  In The Life Aquatic, the violence is real.  People are wounded and killed and the bullets carry a sense of importance since their consequences are real. Anderson's dark side is ever-present here and I got the feeling that he was probably pissed off, self-conscious, and even a bit depressed when he wrote this.  As effective as this approach is in creating a strong link between the film and its creator, it leaves something to be desired in the story itself.  Typically quirky characters like Owen Wilson's Ned Plimpton, Willem Dafoe's Klaus Daimler, and Jeff Goldblum's Alistair Hennessey make for some hysterical scenes and the group of actors is equally adept at bringing the heavier dramatic moments to life, but other than Murray's Steve Zissou, their human side is often ignored.   Anderson usually walks a thin line between eccentricity and caricature with his characters: unlike his previous films, he occasionally veers into those uncharted waters,  making it difficult to appreciate the drama on anything more than a clinical level.

As dark and experimental as I may have made the film sound until now, Wes Anderson fans need not fear.  While he is heading in a new direction, his pathos and unique sensibility for creating quiet and tender dramatic moments free of irony within his films over-arching loopiness remain intact.  His patented, yet restrained, use of slow-motion and typically nostalgic soundtrack however are not left unchanged.  By purposefully distorting the soundtrack and drawing attention to falseness created by slow-motion (most notably in a scene where only Murray's arm moves in slow-motion as he puffs at his cigarette), he is again forcing the audience to pay attention to his techniques rather than simply enjoy them passively.  He even has a sound mixer aboard the boat that appears to control the soundtrack - an amusing nod to a technique used by some of the French New Wave directors he admires.  The CGI, an admittedly bizarre addition to his oeuvre, is silly and distracting at times seemed to exist as a stark contrast to the dark reality of much of the film and as an amusing poke at the sometimes overly superficial set pieces in Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums.  Surprisingly however, some of the films most dramatically effective and ethereally beautiful parts work because of the CGI, which serves as a reminder that almost any technique can be effective in the hands of the right artist.  The mish-mash of old and new cinematic tricks doesn't always come together smoothly creating a few awkward scenes that simply don't work, but fortunately Anderson is a strong director and the cast is talented and diverse enough to carry it through the rough patches and near the sublime territory his work often reaches.  Clearly the work of an auteur, The Life Aquatic isn't Wes Anderson's finest hour, but it is, now more than ever, obvious that he is one of the most important and interesting filmmakers working today.