Lives aquatic: Mediterranean cinema and an ethics of underwater existence

Cinema Journal

Volumn 48, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 52-65

  Past, Elena ^a  

^a WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 69249174346     PISSN: 00097101     EISSN: 15272087     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/cj.0.0104     Document Type: Review

References (27)

1. "C'̀ una lezione silenziosa nell'irresponsabilità grande e paurosa del mare, nel suo ingoiarci buio e solare, nel suo saper accogliere e custodire le agonie che scendono nei fondi di silenzio. Scuola di limite prima di ogni filosofia." Franco Cassano, Il pensiero meridiano (Bari: Laterza, 2005), 16-17. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.
2. A number of recent studies of the region offer perspectives on this complexity from a fascinating variety of perspectives. See Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000);
3. Mauro Peressini and Ratiba Hadj-Moussa, eds., The Mediterranean Reconsidered: Representations, Emergences, Recompositions (Gatineau, Quebec: Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation, 2005);
4. and Natalia Ribas-Mateos, The Mediterranean in the Age of Globalization: Migration, Welfare, & Borders (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2005).
5. In the context of Italian cinema, the Mediterranean has been the setting for a number of meditations on the relationships between people and the sea. Luchino Visconti's canonical neorealist work, La terra trema (The Earth Trembles, 1948), etched the rocky shores of Aci Trezza in the minds of viewers.
6. Other important films that feature the sea as a central narrative and metaphorical force include Michelangelo Antonioni's L'avventura (The Adventure, 1960),
7. Lina Wertmuller's Travolti da un insolito destino nell'azzurro mare d'agosto (Swept Away, 1974),
8. Gabriele Salvatores' Mediterraneo (1991),
9. and Nanni Moretti's "Isole" segment in Caro Diario (Dear Diary, 1993).
10. "Questo mare ad un tempo esterno e interno, abitato e guadato, questo mare-confine produce un'interruzione del dominio dell'identità, costringe ad ospitare la scissione. Qui la terra con la sua ossessione per la fissità, la sicurezza e l'appropriazione urta sempre contro un limite." Cassano, Il pensiero meridiano, 24.
11. The Belafonte is Team Zissou's research ship, whose exterior resembles Jacques Cousteau's Calypso. In spite of its frequent mechanical difficulties, the ship is luxuriously outfitted with a sauna, a library, a gourmet kitchen, and an elaborate control room.
12. For more on Anderson's technical preferences in shooting The Life Aquatic, see Jean Oppenheimer's interview with cinematographer Robert Yeoman in the article "Underwater Antics," American Cinematographer 86, no.1 (2005): 66-77.
13. Nevertheless, narrative and ideological differences between Respiro and neorealist films are evident throughout the film. Rather than raising this strong-willed protagonist, in the neorealist tradition, to the abstract status of social symbol-product of a flagging economy, victim of injustice - Respiro concentrates on Grazia's peculiar mental and emotional state. See Stanley Kauffman's comparison of Respiro with La Terra Trema, "Stanley Kauffman on Films: Different Lives and Places," The New Republic 23 (2003): 28.
14. Matthews, "Respiro," Sight and Sound 13, no.9 (2003): 60-62.
15. In his foreword for Beyond Nature Writing: Expanding the Boundaries of Ecocriticsm, John Elder makes use of the term in a metaphorical sense, encouraging its application to the field of literary studies (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001), vii.
16. For more on underwater filming techniques and in particular on the challenges of light and color, see W. Tuckerman Biays, "Aquacolor Underwater Camera System," American Cinematographer (August-September 1984): 79-100.
17. Deleuze and Guattari explain, "The tree imposes the verb 'to be,' but the fabric of the rhizome is the conjunction, 'and . . . and . . . and . . . ' This conjunction carries enough force to shake and uproot the verb 'to be.' Where are you going? Where are you coming from? What are you heading for? These are totally useless questions." Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 25.
18. In fact Anderson began paying homage to Cousteau before the filming of The Life Aquatic; in his 1998 film Rushmore, his character Max finds his raison d'être in a quotation handwritten in a copy of Cousteau's Diving for Sunken Treasure: "When one man, for wha ever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself." The Frenchman might also arguably be considered a contributor to Crialese's film, thanks to his innovations in the world of underwater photography and in underwater exploration more generally.
19. The Jacques Cousteau Odyssey - The Complete Series. Dir. Jacques Ertaud. 1977. DVD. Warner Brothers, 2005.
20. Félix Guattari, The Three Ecologies, trans. Ian Pindar and Paul Sutton (London: Athlone Press, 2000), 27.
21. Cassano's "pensiero lento" has echoes in a number of contemporary movements that contest the homogenization of culture at the hands of globalization. He specifically connects "slow thought" to phenomena such as the Slow Food movement, inspired by Carlo Petrini, or the writing of Milan Kundera, Sten Nadolny, and Robert Pirsig. Il pensiero meridiano, XV, n. 13.
22. Guattari explains that, "As new stories of the permanent recreation of the world replace the narrative of biblical genesis, we can do no better than cite Walter Benjamin, condemning the reductionism that accompanies the primacy of information: 'When information supplants the old form, storytelling, and when it itself gives way to sensation, this double process reflects an imaginary degradation of experience. Each of these forms is in its own way an offshoot of storytelling. Storytelling . . . does not aim to convey the pure essence of a thing, like information or a report. It sinks the thing into the life of the storyteller, in order to bring it out of him again. Thus traces of the storyteller cling to the story the way the handprints of the potter cling to the clay vessel.'" The Three Ecologies, 67.
23. In a review of concerns faced by the Mediterranean environment, George Dardis and Bernard Smith assert that, "Marine and on-shore polluti n has taken a heavy toll in terms of damage to fauna and flora in the Mediterranean Sea and coastal zone. Collapsing ecosystems are manifest in a variety of ways - plagues of jellyfish, 'red tides' of algal bloom, and high morbidity levels in marine life-forms." "Coastal Zone Management," in The Mediterranean: Environment and Society, ed. Russell King, Lindsay Proudfoot, and Bernard Smith (New York: Arnold, 1997), 273-299, 282.
24. King, "Introduction: An Essay on Mediterraneanism," The Mediterranean: Environment and Society, 6.
25. In other words, it was "at the source of the West's great founding narratives and the cornerstone of its identity. The Greco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian origins of the West have been continually traced back to this 'cradle of Western civilization.'" Peressini and Hadj-Moussa, The Mediterranean Reconsidered, 1.
26. Guattari, The Three Ecologies, 69.
27. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 25.