A Very Persona Film Report 1 "My Octopus Teacher"

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I wrote a very personal version of a review for "My Octopus Teacher" (the Netflix documentary). It's a bit long, so I decided to make an audio to it. Here's the link, if you would rather have a listen!  
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxfClZTAO2fIzT11fNE_4pQA

A Very Personal Film Report on...

"My Octopus Teacher"
Science and Nature Documentary, Netflix, 2020
Craig Foster
Directed by Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed

Saturday night, Movie Night

      As a small entertainment in the long-lasting lockdown days, we hold a pizza and movie night every Saturday. We bake and have pizza along with some selected snacks, while watching a Netflix movie on our TV. It’s a quiet, humble but cozy, small event within the family.
      A few weeks ago, there were some revisions in the movie night selection system. Now we have much clearer regulations on how the movie should be selected, by whom, as well as the processes of how we change the movie if we find it boring/ unbearable. The new rules are fair and we are mostly happy. However, there has been an issue coming up recently. It’s pretty difficult to pick a thing that would please all four of us, even just to some extent. We consist of a geeky 13 year-old, a 14 year-old who seems to have some strong principles and behaviours but we will never fully know what they are, and two 45 year-olds who belong to two totally different biological types, having totally different interests, accordingly.
      Last week was my turn to pick a movie. I chose “My Octopus Teacher”, mostly because Kerry, a good friend of mine, once said that I would like it. And the younger ones in the family kind of like to watch National Geographic Channel, so they should enjoy watching the sea creatures, I thought. I had a little doubt that the other 45 year-old may find it boring. But who knows!
It turned out to be so unpopular that 2 of the audience left the room while it was still playing. The third one confessed that he would have left, but he challenged himself to keep watching to show respect to the movie and the people who produced it. And he was very proud that he was able to be patient enough to stay to the end. In huge contrast, I enjoyed it so much. I had an incredibly amazing experience watching it. Now, what made such a big difference between our impressions?

She, Her, Her

      This is basically a documentary of a man and an octopus. The man was mentally unwell. He was burnt out from his previous job and lost in his ways, life, everything. One day, he decided to go into the sea to cheer himself up or to find something he could hang onto, where he met the octopus. Then he started to do so on a daily basis. He used the words ‘she’ and ‘her’ to describe the octopus the whole time. At the beginning, I wondered why he was so certain that the octopus was female. And you would notice that the way he mentions is not just a casual ‘she’ or ‘her’. By the end, we all got to know why.
      The image in the sea is amazing! The kelp forest, colourful sea urchins, all kinds of unfamiliar plants and animals, some of them you don’t know which...… they are swaying in the water, like the grass, leaves and trees sway in the wind. The beautifulness of the sea bottom and the mystical creatures there reminded me of something I did in Croatia, when the world was not under the COVID-19 spell yet. That was May of a few years ago. We, the same four, were on an island of Croatia and relaxing at a small beach. The water was so clear that I could spot lots of little fish swimming and shining, as well as so many sea urchins sitting at the bottom of the sea. Fresh sea urchins! Lots of them, for free! Right there! Instantly, I got very excited, and my greediness of curiosity and wanting-to-try-eating-them ness skyrocketed in its amount. Although I am usually a calm, laid-back, relaxed woman, that time I wasn’t any of that. I required my husband and my daughter to pick up some sea urchins for me (as I cannot swim where my feet do not reach the bottom). They complained that the spiky bits hurt them, but they successfully came back to our base on the sand, along with a few of the very black, shiny creatures. The urchins were still moving on the flattish stone, which is changing into a chopping board, shortly. At that moment, I didn’t think how wonderfully beautiful they were in the sea with all the other creatures there. I wish I had, then I wouldn’t have done the next move; chopping their outer parts open with a stone and taste their body. Oh. They tasted amazing. Tasted like a soft, thick dream. But how cruel it was! How stupid! How disrespectful to do such a thing only out of curiosity and the wildness I happened to have somewhere far inside of me! I wasn’t even hungry. …...I remembered that and felt very, very regretful almost the whole time I was watching the documentary. 
      Anyway, in the film, you get to see how interestingly the octopus moves, how fast it can swim, changes its color in an instant, etc, etc, …..Not only that, you will also see how smart and creative it is. It hides itself by becoming a clump of seashells. When it was chased by a scary pyjama shark, it stuck to the shark’s back so that the shark could never get it. Those episodes are something we would learn in picture books when we are little, and often, we never have chances to practice those strategies ourselves or never see anyone practicing them. It was astonishing! I was so excited that I didn’t notice that the other people in the room were not as excited as I was.
At the beginning, they also enjoyed the scenes in the sea, but that didn’t last for long. For my husband, the documentary was just too long while ‘nothing’ happens. He admits that he might have enjoyed it if the octopus talked or there were incidents that occurred one after another. My daughter thought the man was sick and crazy. He was obsessive. He fell in love with an octopus! The man was the main reason she couldn’t like the documentary. The duration was also a problem for her, all that time, just for an octopus. She would have liked it more if a lot more different creatures were introduced in neutral, observational ways, rather than seeing everything through a very strange man’s strange way. But then, it would have become National Geographic Channel. Also for my son, the man was the most difficult aspect to bear. My 13 year-old didn’t like the man’s voice and his accent. It’s understandable how hard it was for the young geek, because about 80% or more of the whole time the man’s voice was talking in the background or the moving image of himself. 

Conclusion

      The man was so devoted to the octopus. He looked so very heartbroken when he had to talk about how his ‘she’ died. His voice was shaking. Yes, it was a little bit strange for me too, to see a muscly, respectable man falling in love with an octopus so badly and talking about it. But it was not disgusting at all. It’s a pure thing. Through the octopus, he thought and thought and thought to get through. He is no longer in the endless darkness. He is standing back on his feet now. 

       My teenage children are a little bit concerned if one day, I will fall in love with a duck or a blue heron in the nearby canals, or one of the sheep in the field and decide to stay close to it every day. I am not 100% sure that it won’t happen!