I’ve been sitting here for more than fifteen minutes staring at the screen just sort of absorbing what I just watched, knowing I have to write something that would make sense to anyone reading. You’ve most likely come here to check the star rating and make a quick decision on whether a film so oddly titled would be worth your time, and I can’t fault you for that. Not in the least. I mean … My Octopus Teacher? It sounds like the name of a Japanese animated kid’s flick.
But let me get this out of the way right quick. This is nothing like anything you’ve seen before, and while I don’t want to overstuff this with false hyperbole, My Octopus Teacher is one of the most genuine film experiences I’ve had in a very long time. A moving, educational, stirring, and sometimes breathtaking journey that is both incredibly personal and yet so powerfully connective. You’re going to meet an octopus and she will move you in ways you won’t be prepared for.
Craig Foster grew up on the edge of the ocean. Literally. In those years, he built a profound affinity for its majesty as he matured, and while he become a documentarian on land as an adult, the waters always seemed to beckon. We learn that his time with a group of African trackers left him feeling disassociated with nature, and years on, when he started his own family near the sea, he felt hollow and undefined as a person. The reasons why are not important. He doesn’t even offer explanation, the emptiness the takeaway, not the momentum behind it. Either way, he found solace back under the waves, free diving in cold waters with only fins and a snorkel, swimming in a thick kelp forest teeming with life. Believe me, this alone has tremendous weight.
And it is here where one day he comes upon a small octopus, a female weirdly curled into a ball sheathing itself in abandoned shells. But why? It’s a mystery, and when she dashes off, Craig follows. She soon hides herself in the crevices of a small hidden den, where Craig forms an idea that would change his life. What if he returned to this spot every day? What if he visited this octopus and observed her life … every single day? So he does.
You might think this is something akin to a BBC documentary, and well, at least visually, you’d be pretty spot on. Directors Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed deliver a stunning underwater experience that often feels magical in piecing together what amount to a full year’s footage Foster created. It is only Foster on screen, save for a few images of his son, and only Foster speaks, sitting at a table in his home, emotionally peeling back the multiple layers of this relationship between him and a mollusc as we cut to his long dives, holding his breath at the bottom of this swaying, bountiful forest, bonding with an animal that clearly has an intelligence we can only guess to its depth. When the camera lingers on its eyes looking back at it, you can’t help but feel humbled, and more, almost desperate to know what it’s thinking. Who are we? It presses on your chest.
I can’t give up anymore of the surprises that weave their way into this tale, one that includes darkness, sharks, hopes, tragedy, comedy, and a surreal sense of humanity. Foster is a tremendous presence in his own story, his humility and awareness deeply affecting the experience, yet it is a small female octopus struggling to survive in the company of a strange human being that leaves you most struck. It’s wonderful. And it should be shared.