I loved 'My Octopus Teacher' so much that saying anything more than that I urge you to watch it as soon as you can, ideally with your children, seems a waste of time and words. Nonetheless I will venture some thoughts as to why I think this documentary is so much more significant and important than your common or garden Attenborough.
This is a deeply personal programme but also one which is itself a lesson of universal application. Reduced to its barest bones it's: man goes swimming, man meets octopus, man loves octopus. Characterised in that way it sounds absolutely absurd, troubling even. But that isn't really it at all.
Its narrator/director/protagonist, Craig Foster, is not a famous man. Nor is there anything about this programme, or him in it, that suggests that he has any interest in the pursuit of fame. He is very softly spoken, totally untheatrical or breathlessly wondering in his commentary. And yet all of that serves only to make his commentary all the more remarkable.
The sea in which Foster swam every day is both bountiful but also fraught with danger. He does not spell out what was going on in his personal life when he started his endeavour but it seems plain that he was contending with some kind of crisis or trauma. In that sense swimming clearly became catharsis for him.
He explains early on that he did not want a wetsuit or diving gear. We are not in our natural element swimming underwater for prolonged periods but practice, focus and determination permit us to journey there. There are growing numbers of studies that cold water swimming is not just beneficial for our physical health but our mental wellbeing also. It is difficult to give too much prominence to mental demons when you are literally being buffeted by huge waves.
Something that we do require, if life is worth living, is a purpose. In this film Foster finds a purpose and yet it's a purpose so far removed from what the vast majority of us regard as being significant and essential. His purpose is to observe, record and chronicle this octopus' life.
Suffice to say bearing witness to the ingenuity, versatility and playfulness of this octopus' existence makes the prospect of a plateful of calamari seem almost a desecration. One thing this programme does not do is solemnly intone about man's devastating destruction of the seas. Instead it revels in their richness and lets the viewer draw their own conclusions about the true price we pay for plundering and polluting earth's natural habitats.
For me the most affecting part of the show is when Foster is joined by his young son and he comments proudly on how strong a swimmer he has become. This is, after all, a blog about fathering, and I seize upon models of fathers communing with their sons. Shared activity, shared values and shared joy.
Watch it now.
Trailer - https://youtu.be/3s0LTDhqe5A
No comments:
Post a Comment