Humans are a mix of brilliantly intelligent and tragically stupid. The way our collective stupidity is often revealed is in how ignorant we are about things we don’t yet understand. We are born assuming we know everything. It takes time and maturity to realize we don’t. Einstein said the more he knew the more he realized he didn’t know. That is what real intelligence is: that ability to keep part of your mind open to things you don’t yet know.
Approaching life with certainty rather than humility is a recipe for a life full of disappointment. Rather, to always maintain a sense of wonder, and to try hard to keep those doors open you will evolve as a person, as a thinker, as a human being.
There probably aren’t many people who would swim in very cold water and pay close attention to the behavior of one tiny charismatic octopus and yet that is what Craig Foster does in the magnificent documentary My Octopus Teacher.
Overcoming personal trauma Foster dives with his camera under the water and befriends an octopus. If you didn’t know, they are intelligent creatures with very short lives. To know one is to have your heart broken almost immediately because you know their life cycle is so short. That means they have to be born with their intelligence highly evolved already, as there is not much time to learn new things.
If you know how to recognize intelligence in animals you start noticing it everywhere. In the mornings when I take my dog Jack, a collie mix I found traveling to Colorado in the Four Corners, out for a walk he looks up at me while we’re in the elevator – what he’s looking for is a command from me as he’s been bred as a herding dog, or at least part of him has. If I give him a directive his face lights up because now he has a purpose. Chasing a ball, or finding someone he knows are two of those things. But most of the time I do what a primate does when making a visual connection, I try to communicate other things, like love – or silly phrases like, “Who’s Jack?”
But I know my dog’s intelligence in how he wanders on our walks, where he wants to go, and only part of that is his need to sniff things. He has evolved with traits he needs to survive. Does that make him an apex predator? No. He is not. He is a scrapper and a scavenger who evolved alongside humans – the better he serves humans the better chance of survival. And so he looks up at me and waits for a command. It’s okay, I think, you don’t have to serve me, Jack. You can have your autonomy. Of course, he can’t. He could never survive if unleashed and set free. HIs survival depends on a human taking care of him.
You don’t have to spend much time online before you are confronted with yet another animal cruelty video. Whether it’s the dog thrown off the bridge, or the cat set on fire, or the horse collapsing during a carriage ride – the internet tells us this cruelty is ubiquitous. Most of us can compartmentalize those videos and think, “I am not them.” But it’s more complicated when we think about what we do to very intelligent pigs in this country. We can’t think about that because it is too big of a problem. It is much easier for us to have someone we can blame for the crime of animal cruelty rather than an entire species that is silently condoning something future generations will not forgive.
It isn’t just that we put pigs in factory farms, it’s that we continue the practice of gestation crates, which means a pig must spend her entire life on her side, birthing one litter of babies after another. She can’t get up. She can’t play with them. She can’t teach them how to forage for food she can only feed them until they are old enough to be slaughtered, at which time they are sent away and she is impregnated again. There is nothing she can do but lay there for her entire life. This goes on in this country every day to feed millions of people. Knowing this, it’s hard for me ultimately to ever be that trustful or admiring of our species, even when we say we are good, especially when we say we are good.
There is something about intelligence, the intelligence of pigs or dogs or whales or dolphins that makes us stop and think about how we treat them. A friend of mine always says, why should it matter? And she’s right. Why would we be kinder to more intelligent animals? Probably because we see more of ourselves in them and we are inherently a narcissistic species. Or maybe it’s that, on some unconscious level, we know they know how horrible we are.
When I watched My Octopus Teacher I was in a place where I could not find any decency anywhere I looked. That is because with the pandemic so many of us had no “real world,” only a virtual one. The internet is populated by sociopaths. At least their online persona indicates that. If you spend any time on Twitter or Facebook there won’t seem to be much to admire in how we attack each other viciously, dehumanize others because we don’t agree with them, invest so much of ourselves displaying ourselves. That is why we need art. That is why art is invented. It can say what we can’t.
That is what My Octopus Teacher is – art. Yes, it’s a documentary and it really did happen, but it is told through the eyes of an artist who took his camera and followed around a tiny octopus in her one year life cycle, befriended her, became invested in the life or death struggle of her every day, noticed how she played with fish out of boredom or wonder, noticed how she fashioned herself into a rock sculpture then attached herself to the surface of a shark to outsmart the shark. The octopus noticed him noticing her – their shared intelligence brought them together and they became friends. That is what intelligence can do. It can transcend instinct and ask the question whether this creature I am encountering is going to kill me or not.
That someone had this level of sensitivity, this much emotional involvement in a little tiny bright light gave me hope. It reminded me of our capacity for kindness and love. Every day in every town all over the world there are random acts of kindness that all too often go unnoticed unless someone captures them on camera or in a story.
We are really good at noticing and condemning the bad things people do but we’re not so good at seeing or appreciating the flip side of our cursed species. Our brains give us the capacity to stop what we’re doing and notice that a tiny elusive fluid creature is looking back at us and wondering who we are. Lucky for her, and lucky for us, this human could be trusted.
Although we have to watch her life cycle, which means also her death, Foster takes with him the experience of having evolved from that encounter. He had more courage. He wanted to spend more time among the creatures of the sea and teach his son how to look more closely at something he can barely see wiggling underneath the surface of the water. He healed his heart from trauma because he connected with a creature who was able to communicate with him even without a shared language.
What you realize if you spend enough time around animals and you listen to them carefully, watch them closely, and humanize them you will find we share many of the same traits. Why wouldn’t we, when we evolved from the same set of DNA building blocks, more or less. While this is especially true with mammals, who are also driven by love, fear and survival – it is also true, though it might be harder to see, of Cephalopods.
Are you going to do an article on the Short Films? I have seen all of them this year and I think there’s plenty of subject matter for discussion actually
I wish to read this too. I have to say I was underwhelmed. I’ve seen way stronger years. Animation, in particular, bothers me… a bizarrely weak category.
It’s an odd little documentary that definitely grew on me as it went. I found it very affecting in the end. I think it is down to this film and Collective for the win.
my favorite here is “The Mole Agent”, clearly the underdog in any Oscar predictions and nowhere near a surprise win on Apr 25, but I would be fine with any film winning this category EXCEPT the pretentious and lazily edited “Time”. man, that was a waste of my own aforementioned! 81 minutes that somehow felt like 81 years.
if they have to give it to “My Octopus Teacher” to prevent that from happening, so be it. I kind of like MOT: it’s not groundbreaking filmmaking, but so wasn’t that PowerPoint lecture by Al Gore some years ago that got the Oscar anyway (and which I also kind of like, nonetheless). i thought I was gonna hate it, but it was endearing, even though I could see through all the emotional strings being pulled by the directors.
and being myself married to a disabled person, I would be very happy with a “Crip Camp” win, which accomplished the remarkable feat of making my husband feel represented on the screen. it doesn’t happen very often for him. and CC is a great, albeit traditional, example of documentary feature.
I agree about Time. I was all ready to be involved with it based on hearing what it was about. It just did not click with me. And it did feel much longer than it’s run time.
My biggest problem with Time is how deceptive it was. It took the worst people it could have chosen to talk about prison reform, misrepresented their crimes and painted them as innocents caught in the uncaring wheels of the system. It left me with a bad taste in my mouth
Yes it’s typical BLM propaganda ; a pack of lies and half truths
Those two creeps robbed a Bank , fired at shot at police, then got caught , refused a reasonable plea bargain , then engaged in Jury tampering AND tried to game the system ; and yet we are supposed to feel sorry for them as ”victims”
The dishonesty of it reminds me of that ”Tiger KIng” ..another creep who deserved to be in prison
my issue with Time is: I knew nothing about the story or the characters beforehand, and I still knew very little about them AFTER I finished the film. it was also very confusing: do they have four or six children? at some point, the protagonist says she’s “the mother of six boys”, but there are only four kids in the picture with her. is she playing favorites? has any of them passed away? was it taken before the two youngest were born? I don’t know. the film never bothered to make this (and many other questions) clear. I don’t think good documentaries should leave this many gaps in the story.
and because the film never took the time to flesh these characters out (or even give me the basic courtesy to tell me their names, in most cases), I felt very disconnected to it. and therefore, I didn’t care for them at all.
I mean, I cared about an OCTOPUS, among other characters in this category, but not with a family of six (eight?) people. this is why I think it was lazily edited, to say the least.
“my issue with Time is: I knew nothing about the story or the characters
beforehand, and I still knew very little about them AFTER I finished the
film.”
Bingo!…
If I had a vote it would be for ”Collective ” an an important Doc about government corruption in health care , but the movie with gravitas often doesn’t win ..EG.. ”20 feet from stardom” beat the magnificent ”Act of killing” ..Collective is far too long and in tedious sub titles ; it’ll never win Bafta or Oscar
still, it is a complete masterpiece.
The scenes with the shark were certainly more riveting than any action movie I watched last year.
Ha, very true.
I defy anyone to watch this and not cry at the end.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6664eca6a56e018597d45b61e69cfcb1f167f7d91fbfaae79090d7d026414b08.gif
I learned a nice deal about the creature and came away in awe with nature and the cinematography is stunning. While I admire the editing of what must have been hundreds of hours of footage, but if this octopus was a teacher, the lesson was not that deep. At least, not the way it was presented which was pretty much him narrating us the summary.
It’s sentimental BS , an aquatic E T , but it’s sure to win
And it did! BS or not. Nanananaaaa
Sasha, I agree with everything you say about the understanding of us human beings about the other beings that surround us. But this documentary is a huge hoax. It is not true that Foster dives alone with his camera. For these images to be taken necessarily there was a huge team with multiple cameras. I felt cheated.
I don’t understand why. Was it supposed to be only him..?
I understand that “My Octopus Teacher” may be eye-opening for those who never pay actual attention to our rightful place in the universe (just another disposable lifeform) and shocking for those unaware that we aren’t the only intelligent or sentient lifeform in the planet. It’s an OK documentary (*** / C) too artificial for my taste (which is odd, if you consider it is about wildlife), but come on, I grew up with the works of Jacques Ives Cousteau (3 Oscars and 1 Palm d’Or) and spanish genius naturalist Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente (who tragically passed in the peak of his work, at a plane crash in Alaska, and is the creator of the exemplary documentary series “El Hombre y la Tierra” – The Man and the Earth) and while I liked the documentary, I find it mindblowing, this is actually defeating Collective or Dick Johnson is Dead, again and again… the music is too invasive, underlining the demands on how we should feel, and honestly, when you think about it, the director ismanipulating us to feel pity for him and the octopus when he did nothing to prevent her death on camera, which also leads me to the strange sensation that I have to question if he’s recreating his primary experience or he actually recorded the events as they unfolded, that is something that narration and editing made confusing to me. In the end, I thought – I just finished the viewing, I have been skipping it for a while – it’s vastly overrated and more focused on a younger audience, despite the pretensions of being humble (contradicted by the omnipresence of the director). I honestly hope it doesn’t win the Oscar, not in front of Collective, a way more important and better film, overall.
EDITED… saw “Time” this morning, so at the expense of watching “The Mole Agent”, these are my ratings for the nominees
1. Collective ***** / A+
2. Time **** 1/2 / B+
3. Crip Camp *** / C
4. My Octopus Teacher *** / C-
It’s a frugal pick. But frugal only bothers the industry in categories they really care about, which isn’t the case here.
It’s a frugal pick. But frugal only bothers the industry in categories they really care about, which isn’t the case here.
I’d go with:
1. Time (4.5/5)
2. Collective (4/5)
3. The Mole Agent (3/5)
4. Crip Camp (3/5)
5. My Octopus Teacher (1.5/5)
You must be a plank or a juvenile to be seduced by BLM propaganda like ”Time”
you must be trying to get banned
1. Collective A
2. Crip Camp A
3. My Octopus Teacher A-
4. The Mole Agent B+
5. Time B-
Alright, here is my ranking:
1. Collective (4.5 out of 5)
2. My Octopus Teacher (4/5)
3. The Mole Agent (3.5/5)
4. Time (3.5/5)
5. Crip Camp (2.5/5)
TIME is BLM propaganda for christsake and you must be a dunce to not recognise it
bye, tarleton.
come back in a week when your temp ban is over.
BLM propaganda? Seriously? A film that bravely underlines the over-the-top injustice of the law system in the USA by putting ourselves – literally – in the skin of those who are more severly judged by it? A film that dares to show the audience, God forbid!, that these people are HUMANS? With families that also suffer? Now, a film that only begs for empathy becomes propaganda… if you want to see some propaganda films, they do well at Oscar, by the way… that’s why Time probably won’t win.
It’s very well shot but didn’t work for me. I thought it was cheap self-help with beautiful images. The tone of the voiceover really bothered me at some parts too. Frugal. The industry thought it was frugal to award La La Land and The Revenant but will award this over Colectiv after snubbing Welcome to Chechnya and not even shortlisting The Dissident. Typical case of foreign language bias too.
That’s said, it’s winning the category.
I liked it a lot . More than i expected to . That said to not even nominate The Dissident , which won the WGA Screenplay award for Documentary is a disgrace .
I liked it a lot . More than i expected to . That said to not even nominate The Dissident , which won the WGA Screenplay award for Documentary is a disgrace .
It’s worse, Steve… it wasn’t even in the top 15. 1h30min of a black-and-white mute film about a pig was at the Oscars shortlist. Not The Dissident. I guess frugality doesn’t apply to the doc branch.
Important movies with gravitas often don’t win cos the voters prefer to be entertained than educated about serious matters
Because voters (the industry as a whole) don’t care about docs. Frugality only bothers the industry in categories they care about – Picture, Screenplay… not docs.
You constantly use the word ”frugality” without seemingly being aware of what it means ..just a bad choice of words on your part, apparently
The first 30mins, I thought this is nothing special in comparison to NGC and this guy has too much time on his hand. And then, I slowly forgot about this and totally captivated by the film. And by the end, I was tearing up.
When she was playing with the fish and then saw the diver and rushed over to hug him I started to sob. Such a great documentary. I hope it wins.
I understand that “My Octopus Teacher” may be eye-opening for those who never pay actual attention to our rightful place in the universe (just another disposable lifeform) and shocking for those unaware that we aren’t the only intelligent or sentient lifeform in the planet. It’s an OK documentary (*** / C) too artificial for my taste (which is odd, if you consider it is about wildlife), but come on, I grew up with the works of Jacques Ives Cousteau (3 Oscars and 1 Palm d’Or) and spanish genius naturalist Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente (who tragically passed in the peak of his work, at a plane crash in Alaska, and is the creator of the exemplary documentary series “El Hombre y la Tierra” – The Man and the Earth) and while I liked the documentary, I find it mindblowing, this is actually defeating Collective or Dick Johnson is Dead, again and again… the music is too invasive, underlining the demands on how we should feel, and honestly, when you think about it, the director ismanipulating us to feel pity for him and the octopus when he did nothing to prevent her death on camera, which also leads me to the strange sensation that I have to question if he’s recreating his primary experience or he actually recorded the events as they unfolded, that is something that narration and editing made confusing to me. In the end, I thought – I just finished the viewing, I have been skipping it for a while – it’s vastly overrated and more focused on a younger audience, despite the pretensions of being humble (contradicted by the omnipresence of the director). I honestly hope it doesn’t win the Oscar, not in front of Collective, a way more important and better film, overall.
It’s very well shot but didn’t work for me. I thought it was cheap self-help with beautiful images. The tone of the voiceover really bothered me at some parts too. Frugal. The industry thought it was frugal to award La La Land and The Revenant but will award this over Colectiv after snubbing Welcome to Chechnya and not even shortlisting The Dissident. Typical case of foreign language bias too.
That’s said, it’s winning the category.