More Questions, Including "L'Odyssée"

[Laura]

As we wrap up the month of April and our earth day topic, here are some more questions to think about and discuss. Some of these questions will include the film "The Odyssey" or "L'Odyssée," about Jacques Cousteau.

1) What are some of your main takeaways from "The Human, the Orchid, and the Octopus"? How did your knowledge from the autobiographical chapters of the book inform your viewing of the film "The Odyssey"?

2) The film presents a more narrative, perhaps sensational account of Cousteau's life, particularly with his family (so much so that The Cousteau Society has distanced itself from the film). Do you think the film took more creative liberties than is proper? How does the style of biographical adaptation strike you?

3) Taking the film as an independent work, however accurate or not it may be to Cousteau's life, let's talk about some of the themes explored. How is the struggle between family members represented in "The Odyssey"? How is Cousteau able to find meaning in his life of exploration despite the many dilemmas he and his team face? What does the main conflict between Jacques and Philippe show us about generational conflict in environmental concerns?

[Laura]

Here are some of my thoughts on the questions above!

1) Certain chapters of the book were quite sad for me to read, as they brought me renewed awareness of environmental concerns that I don't believe have been changed much in the years since this book was published. For example, I did not know about the mostly unregulated state of the fishing industry, and the chapter "Catch as Catch Can" was quite difficult to read. I am still actually working through the chapter on nuclear waste, which depicts a similarly troubling past and future. My hope, again, is that perhaps my generation and future generations will begin to address these issues in more sustainable ways. It may take a genius-level thinker to come up with solutions that can reverse some of the damage done, if that is even still possible. While Cousteau's chapter on life in a hypothetical future a billion years or two from now strikes me as somewhat silly in some ways (with his imagined future of a united human-orca community, for instance), I appreciate that we can hope for a future where life has adapted to the challenges handed down.

The autobiographical sections of the book were more fun to read, and it felt like I was living vicariously through their adventures in ocean exploration and shark encounters and so on... I feel the book gave me a good baseline knowledge to appreciate some of the biographical bullet points in the movie, "L'Odyssee." Without this knowledge, I may have missed the significance of certain things that were glossed over in the film (which assumes the viewer has some cursory knowledge of Cousteau's life).

2) I think the creative liberties of the movie were just OK. I can see why the Cousteau Society would want to distance itself from the film, because it does not always cast Jacques in the best light, with sordid affairs and an implied obliviousness to environmental concerns (until his son intervened) that did not seem consistent with how Cousteau represents himself. I would have to read other source materials, such as his son Jean-Michel's bio to determine whether these portrayals could be considered fair. They were certainly more sensational to say the least, but even so I enjoyed the movie and feel it was generally positive about Cousteau's life, family, and work. Every family, every life, has its share of difficult things to work through, and I think the film was trying to create a more dramatic arc of growth in Jacques and his relationships with Philippe and Simone specifically.

3) The film shows a struggle between family priority and success in their monumental venture to explore the oceans. The Calypso is repaired at the cost of Simone's literal family heirlooms, while the young boys have to leave the family for boarding school to allow their parents to go to sea. While this is something Jacques and Simone set out to do together, Jacques' success leads him to have affairs and do things that strain their marriage. Simone ends up claiming the boat as her home with Jacques spending time on land, away from this family, attending to constant demands on his time and ongoing funding crises of the venture. Jacques' father-son bond with Philippe is the most delicate of the family relationships represented in the film, as Philippe expresses his desire to make his own way and his disapproval of many of his father's choices. While the book gave me the impression that Jacques Cousteau arrived at his own awareness of environmental concerns through his work, the film portrays Philippe as being instrumental in bringing these to his attention. While the dynamic is probably dramatized for the film, it does symbolize something true about how one generation builds on and then informs the knowledge and awareness of past generations. This is especially resonant given the many concerns being handed down to our children's generation. Like Jacques and Philippe, successive generations will need to work together to solve the problems created in the past and present for a better future.

[Laura]

For those interested in learning more about how the film represented Cousteau and how they went about making the underwater scenes, here is a review:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/201...