The Oscar-winning nature film “My Octopus Teacher” makes its eight-armed protagonist unforgettable.
The big, sorely missed cinema is not only ahead of the streaming competition. Let’s not forget the full-bodied advertising: Netflix and Co. cannot compete with the sonorous slogans that have already been printed on film posters. Your brief, brief content is more based on the entertainment on long-haul flights to fall asleep. When Walt Disney brought out “Lady and the Tramp”, he called his work on the poster “the greatest love story on eight paws”. Was that an exaggeration?
“My Octopus Teacher”, the documentary Oscar-winning declaration of love by a diver and environmental activist to a wild octopus, would have deserved something similar – as a veritable romance on a thousand suckers. At least. Apart from the fact that this unusual nature film has a lot to do with Disney in a positive sense. For the full-length nature film, it has a similar meaning as “The Desert Lives” at the time: It is a highly emotional and extremely popular approach to hidden natural beauties that aggressively exploits all the means of cinema – but without the manipulative interventions in the recordings and in one far more personal tone.
Craig Foster, the human of the two characters, tells the story of an unusual friendship in an unpretentious diary style. As if by the way, he literally speaks up from the kitchen table over and over again, without giving the impression of vanity through the presence of the camera. Perhaps the breathtaking underwater images at the center of the film just needed a break from time to time so as not to overwhelm anyone.
Foster made a name for himself twenty years ago with the documentary “The Great Dance” about the San indigenous people in the Kalahari Desert. As he admits, he always regretted not being able to develop such a close relationship with nature himself as the tracker portrayed there. In a life crisis, the South African devoted himself intensively to snorkeling and got closer to the matter. Happy to have a picturesque seaweed forest on your doorstep. And those who can hold their breath long enough will be rewarded by the enchanted underwater world with sparkling colorful fish, starfish, patterned sharks – and finally the eponymous octopus.
During Foster’s daily visits, the attractive specimen of an iconic but little-explored species reveals more and more of itself. As a huntress, the squid lady does not seem to be very feared by her fish prey. Often she just seems to be looking for a game with the water people. Despite her shyness, she meets Foster, whom she lures with his camera, with astonishing curiosity. However, it is also easy to scare off and can then be searched by this for days. Or should your obsessive admirer simply admit that his love of animals has already taken on forms of stalking? When the octopus finally regains confidence, eight tender arms stretch out towards his body.
It is not known which pictures come from Foster’s own camera and which have real diary character. He hired two directors, the debutante Pippa Ehrlich and the busy wildlife filmmaker James Reed for the film adaptation. The lyrical and detailed underwater images come from a specialist in the BBC series “Our Planet”, Roger Horrocks.
Purists of the “cinéma vérité” will ask how many octopuses actually played this one that we – at the dramatic climax – survive a shark attack and finally see spawn and die. This is of course not an issue in animal films, not only Lassie was always embodied by several four-legged friends in her appearances.
Foster humanizes his protagonist when he interprets her behavior, and the symphonic score by Kevin Smuts weaves a dense carpet of emotions as Disney would have appreciated it. There is just a little bit missing from the Disney style, but that makes a subtle difference. It is not the animal that feelings are foisted on, it is a person’s relationship to nature, which is expanded in its emotionality, but is also repeatedly reflected. At one level, this is still a human-animal relationship in the Jack London tradition. At the same time, however, Foster reflects philosophically on the consolation in the foreign. There are few filmmakers who have made animal films of this quality, an example would be Carroll Ballard, whose unusual Disney production “Never Cry Wolf” is still an insider tip.
To say this wet love story doesn’t leave your eyes dry is hardly an exaggeration. But it is not a schematic romanticization that creates this effect, but the subtle mediation of a longing. Werner Herzog has already fueled it in many films: It is literally immersing yourself in a remote, sublime part of creation that would get along very well without us humans – but is generously inviting in the form of this eight-armed intelligence. Even if Netflix apparently thinks this gem is a children’s film, it has no age limits.
In the case of a streaming service that has a hard time promoting its products with the right words, it is not surprising that even with a German title you are really wrong: “My teacher, the octopus”. Didn’t anyone look? It’s still a female.
My Octopus Teacher / My teacher, the octopus. South Africa 2020. Directed by Pippa Ehrlich, James Reed. 85 minutes.
