Doco on Cousteau compels
Becoming Cousteau (M, 92 mins) Directed by Liz Garbus Reviewed by James Croot ★★★★★
He was the aquatic answer to Sir Edmund Hillary and Sir David Attenborough. The French sea adventurer who brought the ocean into our living rooms. The man who invented the aqualung and helped develop underwater photography, so he could share with the world what he was seeing on his deep dives into Earth’s big blue.
And, as Liz Garbus’ absorbing, compelling and often surprising documentary reveals, the older Jacques-Yves Cousteau got, the more he became concerned about the decline of the ocean’s ecosystems.
The specialist naval pilot-turned-explorer and film-maker was one of the first media personalities to raise the alarm about climate change, through his own American prime-time programming and on global chat show appearances, deeply concerned by seeing coral reefs transformed into wastelands, fishing grounds depleted and an ocean choked by pollution.
‘‘We are drawing blank cheques on future generations,’’ he says to one-time British talk show king Michael Parkinson during one of the many, many impressive archival clips on display here.
Naturally, there’s also plenty of footage from Cousteau’s Oscar and Palme d’Or-winning documentary The Silent World (a project he codirected with legendary French film-maker Louis Malle) and his many TV series, especially the beloved The Undersea World with Jacques Cousteau.
Watching the avuncular Cousteau in his rouge chapeau (a beanie, to be precise) with the rest of the eclectic crew on the former British Royal Navy mine-sweeper-turned-research-vessel the Calypso, gives you a new appreciation for Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.
Just soaking in a few moments of footage here makes one realise just what a loving homage and spoton pastiche of The Undersea World it truly was.
However, Becoming Cousteau director Garbus, whose previous subjects have included such complicated characters as Nina Simone and Bobby Fischer, also isn’t afraid to tackle the darker moments in his life and the contradictions within Cousteau’s crusades.
There are details of the horrific car accident that ended his naval career, how he and his team ‘‘rode’’ turtles and often used dynamite ‘‘in the name of science’’, that they were arguably responsible for Abu Dhabi’s wealth after successfully completing an oil exploration contract, and the profound effect the death of his son had on his world view in his last years.
On the lighter side, it’s hard not to chuckle slightly at his plans for permanent human habitation on the ocean floor.
As well as an incredible tidal wave of archival audio and video footage, lovingly curated from a vast range of sources, Becoming Cousteau brings its subject to life via French actor Vincent Cassel’s narration of the explorer’s diaries.
This is a tale free of talking heads and commentators looking back at events they only half-remember, and Garbus’ portrait is all the more effective and impactful as a result of that.
Becoming Cousteau is in select cinemas now.
The older Jacques-Yves Cousteau got, the more he became concerned about the decline of the ocean’s ecosystems