"My Octopus Teacher" is a very sweet documentary
Apologies for not publishing yesterday; I took the day off of all work, including this newsletter.
On a recommendation from my sister Jess (who is a fantastic freelance editor — hire her for all your editing needs), I watched My Octopus Teacher on Netflix last night, and it’s very sweet! It’s about a filmmaker named Craig Foster who becomes friends with a small octopus in the ocean.
Octopuses are my favourite animal, to the point that I had to tell people to stop buying me octopus-themed stuff, because I didn’t want to become That Weird Octopus Girl. That said, when I heard the premise of a movie was “grown man forms a relationship with a female octopus,” I immediately worried that the movie was gonna go to an icky place. Luckily, it didn’t! It’s all very wholesome and nice, and Foster got incredible footage of the octopus, even capturing them cuddling together multiple times. There’s danger, friendship, love, and most importantly, an octopus changing colours and textures, because they are freaky, underwater alien creatures.
The documentary kind of glosses over Foster’s claim that at the time, he was “in no shape to be a good father” or whatever, but that the octopus helped him gain the perspective to rebuild his relationship with his son. I couldn’t help but wonder how his family felt about him leaving them every single day for a year to go hang out with this octopus instead? Don’t get me wrong, that’s not really want I wanted to see in this documentary, but it just seems like the movie wants to be like Do not pay attention to the family dysfunction — look over here, the octopus is swimming around!!! If the filmmakers didn’t want really want to interrogate what compelled Foster to spend hours in the ocean every day (and they clearly didn’t want to), they shouldn’t have mentioned his family problems at all. Of course, then they wouldn’t be able to conclude with the “how this octopus changed my life” message.
Anyway, it’s a light, pleasant documentary that I liked! Octopuses are really cool!!! But if you want any real deep character studies, probably look elsewhere.
My Octopus Teacher is on Netflix.
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That’s all for me today, gorgeous. Talk to you soon.
Love,
Kat
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