MY OCTOPUS TEACHER
Directing: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B+
I have somewhat mixed feelings about My Octopus Teacher. It’s one of the five films nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, and while it’s a perfectly pleasant movie, it also could be argued it’s the least deserving of the award. It’s also by far the most populist choice of the nominees, however, and has by far the best odds of winning. Between its broad availability to stream on Netflix, and its easily consumable subject matter, in all likelihood it will have the largest audience by a long shot, and that translates to the potential for the most votes by a wide margin. The other films tackle subject matter with more gravity, from racism to disability activism to health care fraud. All three of the other nominees that I have seen (Crip Camp, Collective, and the best film of 2020, Time) are better films, but to varying degrees they are also difficult to watch.
My Octopus Teacher, on the other hand, is the very definition of inviting: it frames its narrative around the daily relationship between a South African snorkeler-photographer, Craig Foster, and a common octopus. Foster is the only person seen as an interview subject; he’s the only one telling the story. Given how much intelligence we ascribe to octopuses, I kind of wish we could have gotten interviews with the octopus telling her side of the story. It’d probably be something along the lines of, “This guy? Yeah, whatever.” We can’t get her side of the story though because she’s dead now.
I say these things partly in jest, because My Octopus Teacher walks right up to the line, stopping just short of anthropomorphism. And when we’re framing nature documentaries in such a way, we have to be very careful. Co-directors Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed make the film very much about Foster’s “journey” with the octopus, and how what they went through together made him feel. On an emotional level, this film tries hard to tug at audience heartstrings, very much from a human point of view.
And we have to remember: Foster might say that the octopus’s intelligence could be likened to that of a cat or a dog, but this is not a domesticated animal. This is straight up wildlife, part of a complex ecosystem, with no moral or emotional components. We are meant to be terrified on the octopus’s behalf when a shark comes along, which happens more than once over the course of a year or so that Foster visits the octopus every single day. I just found myself thinking, who is “teaching” whom here, and how much of value can be learned when the wildlife is being interacted with directly, particularly on such an ongoing basis?
Thats not to say there’s nothing of value here. It may be true that My Octopus Teacher doesn’t reveal any major secrets about the lives of octopuses that are not already known, but documentaries can serve as a bridge to educating wider audiences. And this cinematography, a whole lot of it using underwater cameras and footage, is particularly beautiful, especially by documentary standards. Make no mistake: this movie is beautiful to look at. It’s just that this movie is nowhere near as “profound” as it pretends to be.
I still enjoyed it. Craig Foster has a singularly chill vibe, an even-keeled way of speaking as he talks about all these experiences with the octopus, that is genuinely soothing. Be careful or this movie might even lull you into a nap—and not because it’s boring, which it isn’t at all. And we do get to see some very cool and amazing things about octopus behavior and their bodies, how they can modify themselves from color and texture changes to even growing back a severed arm. They’re like eight-legged lizards of the sea. All of this is to say that My Octopus Teach is easy to find and easy to watch: in terms of viewing, it’s the easy choice. I just don’t want it to be the easy choice for Oscar voters.
Craig Foster makes contact. But should he, really?
Overall: B