The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou - 7

This film confirmed my analysis over the last year that living in the reality that we do; one filled with revenge, pain, malice, grace, forgiveness, and love, that one has constantly to struggle to keep from laughing and crying at every moment of time in each and everyday. Human life on this planet is both outrageously absurd and hilarious, but also in that same moment sad and a call to responsible living; a life full of choices that both love and hate others and leaves its mark on the physical reality that we live in. This film is both funny and sad, and yet remains within Wes Andersen's theme of what Keith Martel calls, "relational reconciliation." If you haven't seen Andersen's other films I would recommend seeing them (Bottlerockets, which I have yet to see, as well as Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaum's). There is something to be said for the brokenness of human relationship and how we go about restoring them, and often failing as human are often likely to do. And in this is the struggle to live with our own responsibilities and regrets as we live and die with the choices that have marked our lives. And yet, there is always an "and yet, because the mystery of grace allows us to be freed from the ever crushing burden, because it opens our reality to things like mercy and forgiveness with poke us out of our rationalism, and into a fuller kind of living. You don't have to go chasing the past, or look in the depths of the sea to see beauty, you just have to look around and see the choice that lie in front of you in the pain and the hilarity of life experience.