My Octopus Teacher

Starring: Craig Foster, Tom Foster
Directed by: Pippa Ehrlich, James Reed
Rating: TV-G
Genre: Documentary
2020

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A man (Craig Foster) befriends a wild octopus.

Review:

Tim: It's still a bit challenging for me to explain My Octopus Teacher or my thoughts on it. This Academy Award winning Best Documentary is a well made movie that tells a story that is hard to believe. Regardless of the title, it's basically a story about a guy who makes honest-to-goodness friends with a wild octopus. This doesn't even seem believable to me, but it actually happened and there's a good deal of footage as proof.

Some of the brilliance of Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed's film is that they take this story, which is really about a guy befriending an octopus and make it feel like it's so much more. Through this unlikely friendship, we learn about diversity of life on earth. We learn about the differences between land mammals and undersea creatures. We contemplate how life is different and ask ourselves if the underwater animals might not have remembered something that we human beings have forgotten. None of these things are inherent in the story of man and octopus friends, but the filmmakers pull those deeper themes out.

One other thing that really struck me is that Craig Foster was able to accomplish what he does in the film because he started swimming in the same place every single day. This feels unfathomable in 2020. Our world is built for speed- there's so much to do, never enough time to do it. You like movies? You couldn't ever watch 1% of the all the worthwhile movies out there. TV? Completely overwhelming to try and stay up-to-date with the latest shows. Books? Good luck. And, in the midst of all these battles for our attention, Foster went swimming in the same location every day. This allowed him to focus and tap into details that no one would ever notice. It also allowed him to become friends with an actual octopus. It's unlikely any of us will take this to an extreme and do what Foster did, but the movie serves as a reminder that sometimes, we need to slow down and pay attention. You can't just run through life.

Foster makes a good interviewee, too. His ability to articulate his thinking and recount his experiences is a big part of why this movie works. It was fascinating to see him interviewed here and I found those scenes equally as powerful as the amazing underwater sequences. The visuals are impressive, truly. The ability to capture Foster with the octopus and the lush underwater landscape was stunning. I loved the visuals of a place I'll likely never be (I'm a bad swimmer) and I appreciated how the movie pulled us into this environment.

The story itself is fairly compelling. Being an octopus is not an easy life and we get to see that depicted here. As the movie progresses, we learn to care about this octopus and we want it to survive. Foster himself struggles with this role. How much should he interfere in nature? It's a big question and it's interesting to see Foster struggle with that question. Towards the end of the movie, there are some really intense sequences. That speaks to how much these people and creatures have grown on us.

Now, I was a big fan of My Octopus Teacher. It's a really good movie and it's nice that it won the Academy Award for Best Documentary. I think the best documentaries really hit home hard- they open your eyes, change your behaviors, inspire some kind of action. That's not the case here and it's why I wouldn't quite call this a "great" movie. It was an interesting, compelling story. I thought a little differently, I guess, but the movie didn't inspire much change in me. Neither did it really hit home emotionally. I was invested, but kept some distance from the events on screen. Still, this is a really good documentary and I'm so happy I watched it.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating- 7.5



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