'Life Aquatic' brings home the eccentric 'family'
By Terry Lawson
Knight Ridder News Service
Call it the week of Oscar Contenders That Weren't.
Late last year, Wes Anderson's "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou," Paul Weitz's "In Good Company" and Michael Radford's adaptation of Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" were all being prepped for limited theatrical showings. The hope was they would draw critical acclaim and Academy Award nominations before getting wider releases.
In all three cases, reviews were mixed and nominations were not forthcoming. But their releases on DVD provide an opportunity for redemption and re-evaluation, which, it turns out, is well-deserved.
All three of Anderson's previous droll and deadpan ensemble comedies — 1996's "Bottle Rocket," 1999's "Rushmore" and 2001's "The Royal Tenenbaums" — were much talked about and little seen until they arrived on home video, where they developed avid followings.
"The Life Aquatic" stars Bill Murray as the melancholy Zissou, the Jacques Costeau-inspired oceanographer/documentary film hero, on a "Moby Dick"-like quest to kill the elusive Jaguar Shark that ate his long time partner. As with "Tenenbaums," Anderson surrounded a difficult-to-embrace protagonist with a more agreeable but no less eccentric "family," including Owen Wilson as the airplane-pilot son Zissou never knew he had; Cate Blanchett as a journalist chronicling the (mis)adventure; Jeff Goldblum as Zissou's suave rival; and Anjelica Huston as his estranged wife.
"The Life Aquatic" is being released on a single disc version by a division of Disney. But for only $3 more, you can own the film in a comprehensive Criterion Collection (4 stars) double-disc edition.
It includes everything on the single disc version (like the Anderson commentary and the outtakes), as well as a making-of documentary by venerated filmmaker Albert Maysles; a song track of the David Bowie compositions, and much more. As one of those rare souls who preferred this film to "Tenenbaums" (which by the way, I appreciate more today than originally), I believe "The Life Aquatic" will also improve with age.
"In Good Company" (3 stars, Universal) is a far more formulaic comedy, but it's also a very smart movie directed by Paul Weitz, who has come a long way since "American Pie." Topher Grace, a graceful comic actor, plays a biz school whiz kid who gets an executive ad sales position at a New York-based magazine acquired by the business world guru of the month (Malcolm McDowell).
The DVD has a couple of deleted scenes and featurettes, but nothing special. It's the movie that's special.
In "The Merchant of Venice" (3 stars, Columbia-TriStar) Al Pacino is pretty incredible as Shylock, a Jew who fronts money to the anti-Semitic merchant Antonio so that he can in turn lend it to Bassanio (Joseph Fiennes — on whom, in this interpretation, Antonio harbors a crush). Bassanio needs the money so he can woo Portia. When Antonio offends Shylock and does not repay him, the moneylender demands his "pound of flesh."
Classic films
Controversy, of course, can be good — and sometimes, it can even be enlightening, a point that is well-made in yet another well-conceived box set from Warner Home Video titled, straightforwardly, "Controversial Classics."
It contains seven films, none previously available on DVD (a couple were never issued on VHS) that raised eyebrows and provoked arguments when originally released; it also includes one of my personal Top 20 films, 1957's "A Face in the Crowd" (4 stars). Though most people would probably choose "On the Waterfront" as director Elia Kazan's finest cinematic achievement, I'm partial to "Face," which I watched with fascination as a kid who knew Andy Griffith only as the hick who never let on he was smarter than you.
Griffith plays Rhodes, a jailbird and accidental discovery of Patricia Neal, a radio producer who does one of those "man on the street" shows popular in the 1950s. Recognizing a great storyteller when she finds one, she puts Rhodes (whom she cynically dubs "Lonesome" Rhodes) on the air, and he eventually ends up hosting a show on that new medium called television, becoming one of its first stars.
Rhodes is corrupted by power, fame and cynical politicians, and becomes a dangerous demagogue and megalomaniac, and I was in college before I realized it was a Joe McCarthy allegory. (If you didn't live in Paris or New York, you didn't have access to "serious" film writing in that era, unless you count Photoplay.)
Knowing that doesn't make it a better movie, just a more layered one. The DVD contains a documentary, "Facing the Past," that explores the film's intellectual origins — but I still prefer its emotional ones.
All of the other films will have their champions: 1955's "Blackboard Jungle" (3 stars), adapted from an Evan Hunter novel by director Richard Brooks and taking a hard look at inner city public education (and featuring an eye-catching performance from a young Sidney Poitier), it became infamous as the first film to showcase rock 'n' roll. The same year's "Bad Day at Black Rock" (3 stars) starred Spencer Tracy as a World War II vet and whistleblower who dares to deal with a covered-up crime in a western town. To say more would be to give too much away.
