My Octopus Teacher
Jan. 20th, 2022 11:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerThe moment I heard of My Octopus Teacher I felt a consuming desire to watch it. The film is a documentary about a friendship between a man and an octopus, and it did not disappoint!
The man is Craig Foster, a free-diver who had taken to exploring a kelp forest off the coast of his home in South Africa. The octopus is... well, a common octopus, who catches Foster's attention when he sees her crouching on the ocean floor, holding so many shells and rocks and sea urchins on her suckers that looks almost like a rock herself.
Fascinated by this behavior, Foster begins to visit the octopus every day with his underwater camera. At first the octopus is wary. Such is the life of a shell-less invertebrate: when you are that soft and squishy, everything wants to eat you. Slowly, however, the octopus concludes that Foster is just here to hang out, and begins to go around her business when he's around - and then, very occasionally, to interact with him. She reaches out one tentacle and twines it around his hand.
"But are they really friends?" demanded one review that I read, written by a reviewer who I can only assume hates joy. "The octopus can't tell us how she's feeling! Sure, when she cuddles against Foster's chest it may LOOK affectionate, but it's just as possible she's just curious?"
Well, look, if curiosity and friendship are incompatible, then it's Foster's friendship we have to doubt, because he can tell us what he's feeling and he tells us that he was absolutely consumed by curiosity about this creature. Curiosity can grow into and coexist with friendship. It focuses the attention, which is a precursor and prerequisite for affection. (To quote Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird: "Don't you think they're the same thing? Love and attention?")
The underwater photography is absolutely fantastic: such a crystal clear view of this alien world. (Foster comments that the creatures under the sea are stranger than anything we've made up for science fiction, and he's got a point.) And the ending is... well, it's what the ending has to be when you are making a documentary about an animal as short-lived as an octopus. It reminds me of the ending of Charlotte's Web (complete with an encounter with a little baby octopus later on!), where the animal character dies, but the feeling is not one of tragedy but of completion.
The man is Craig Foster, a free-diver who had taken to exploring a kelp forest off the coast of his home in South Africa. The octopus is... well, a common octopus, who catches Foster's attention when he sees her crouching on the ocean floor, holding so many shells and rocks and sea urchins on her suckers that looks almost like a rock herself.
Fascinated by this behavior, Foster begins to visit the octopus every day with his underwater camera. At first the octopus is wary. Such is the life of a shell-less invertebrate: when you are that soft and squishy, everything wants to eat you. Slowly, however, the octopus concludes that Foster is just here to hang out, and begins to go around her business when he's around - and then, very occasionally, to interact with him. She reaches out one tentacle and twines it around his hand.
"But are they really friends?" demanded one review that I read, written by a reviewer who I can only assume hates joy. "The octopus can't tell us how she's feeling! Sure, when she cuddles against Foster's chest it may LOOK affectionate, but it's just as possible she's just curious?"
Well, look, if curiosity and friendship are incompatible, then it's Foster's friendship we have to doubt, because he can tell us what he's feeling and he tells us that he was absolutely consumed by curiosity about this creature. Curiosity can grow into and coexist with friendship. It focuses the attention, which is a precursor and prerequisite for affection. (To quote Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird: "Don't you think they're the same thing? Love and attention?")
The underwater photography is absolutely fantastic: such a crystal clear view of this alien world. (Foster comments that the creatures under the sea are stranger than anything we've made up for science fiction, and he's got a point.) And the ending is... well, it's what the ending has to be when you are making a documentary about an animal as short-lived as an octopus. It reminds me of the ending of Charlotte's Web (complete with an encounter with a little baby octopus later on!), where the animal character dies, but the feeling is not one of tragedy but of completion.
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Date: 2022-01-20 08:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-21 01:42 pm (UTC)