Tracking Cousteau’s transformation
“I am not interested in myself, once and for all. I am interested in the world outside me. My world inside me is nothing for me.”
As impassioned a moment as we are likely to get from a man in the winter of his life — one in which Jacques Cousteau appears to be choking on his fame — it is an outtake from an old interview and comes to us now toward the end of an incredibly moving, and lively, documentary about the storied sea king.
“That is as raw as he was from 500 hours of footage we had,” Liz Garbus admitted, in a phone chat going into the Toronto International Film Festival.
The director of “Becoming Cousteau” — made by National Geographic, premiering in Toronto this weekend — she offers not only an account of the classic French explorer with the ubiquitous red knit cap (often also dubbed the “father of diving,” his innovations having led to the design of the SCUBA), but also a meditation on celebrity itself. The latter? Unsurprising, since it is in the wheelhouse of her previous work, including her last film, “What Happened, Miss Simone?” about Nina Simone, which brought Garbus an Oscar nom.
Raised on the TV specials that made Cousteau a “brand” and a household name decades ago, the idea for a doc about him emerged via her own child. “I was reading a book to my son when he came up,” Garbus shared. That’s when she realized that the memory of Cousteau was fading among younger generations — even though “my son is steeped in imagery made possible because of what he created.”
As she delved further, she realized she also had a built-in story frame: Cousteau, after all, went from a sort of Pollyanna state, a happy explorer dreaming of even building a city underneath the sea, to one whose world view coarsened as the years advanced, his early sirens on the environment turning him into one of the first public conservationists. Using film and TV — the social media of the time — he was a popularizer, letting people into his own live-stream, if you will.
As is so often the case, there was a woman behind the great man. An elusive first wife, Simone — who came from a seafaring family herself and was on their legendary boat, Calypso, as much as he was (often to the neglect of their two sons, vanquished to boarding school). Seeing her in the doc, I told Garbus: “It made me think, where is the Simone Cousteau documentary?”
“I know,” she laughed. “She was, by all intents, the producer.” Simone, though, was so camera-shy that there is very little footage of her and, even during the height of Cousteaumania, few had an inkling about her. No footage, no fame. All of which hints at quite the tortured family history, both when Jacques was alive but also after. One, a drama unto itself — think “Succession,” but with fins.
Philippe and Jean-Michel. That is where it started: those two sons. Raised together in France, it was Philippe who always appeared to be the favourite. Tall, handsome and ambitious, he worked with Dad through the ’60s and ’70s, making films such as the “Undersea World” series. This while Jean-Michel toiled as a marine architect and settled his family in the U.S. — putting both emotional and physical distance between them.
And then with a tragic plane crash, as the documentary explains, everything changed: Philippe, the natural heir, dead, lost to the Tagus River in Portugal. No sooner had the at-sea burial happened, then Jacques — too devastated to talk about the loss — asked his other son to step in as his closest associate. It was finally Jean-Michel’s chance, the outcast now serving as executive vice-president of the Cousteau Society, plus making expeditions with pop — while the family of the onetime prince was more or less exiled. “Suddenly there was no place for me,” is what Jan, Philippe’s widow, has said.
“Little Philippe,” his grandson from the now dead heir? He was never invited on a Cousteau expedition, though he did grow up watching his grandpa’s films.
Another wrinkle in the saga, meanwhile? It came c/o Francine Triplet, a former flight attendant who was Jacques Cousteau’s out-of-view mistress but eventually came on the horizon as Cousteau’s second wife and then official widow. (Simone had died from cancer by then.) While Francine is treated innocuously in the new movie (she had to sign off on the footage) it is no secret, the friction she’s had with her late husband’s wider clan. She and Jean-Michel even fought in court over control of the Calypso and she seems to take extreme umbrage with the idea of a “new Cousteau.”
“It’s a big mistake to think that anybody in the family has the right to Jacques’ vision,” the widow has said, keeping a lid on his legacy. Still president of the Cousteau Society, she’s even once declared, “It’s not a family business at all … there is only one Cousteau.”
It is perhaps worth pointing out that the template for these battles began with “the master” himself when Cousteau filed a lawsuit against JeanMichel back in 1995, in which he insisted Jean-Michel make clear that his resort, initially named Cousteau Fiji Islands Resort, was in no way affiliated with the non-profit Cousteau Society. That suit — supported by Francine — created a rift between father and son, causing even his son’s son, Fabien, in turn to steer clear. For a while.
He is one of several grandchildren who have vied for attention since. Drifting back eventually — “just as rainwater eventually reaches the sea again,” as one article described — in 2014, the showboat pulled off a stunt involving leading a team of scientists and dive professionals on a 31-day “saturation dive” in the Aquarius underwater lab, all of which was broadcast on the internet.
Aquatic competition comes from his own cousin, the younger and possibly more charismatic Philippe. Cue their soft rivalry: Philippe, together with his older sis, Alexandra — active environmentalists both — vs. Fabien and his own sister, Céline (an oceanographer, too).
While “Becoming Cousteau” ends with Jacques’s death in 1997 and does not go into this whole post-mortem — “it could be a six-hour series!” Garbus admits — she also tells me that her focus was less all the gossip (which is always my interest, guilty as charged!), but the manner in which Jacques’s life is a model.
“What I found so moving was this transformation from his hubris, this adventuring figure … to this conservationist,” she said, adding, “It is a metaphor for what the word needs to do, too.”
“Becoming Cousteau” screens Saturday and Thursday at noon at the Cinesphere IMAX Theatre, as well as digitally Sunday at 7 p.m. and Sept. 18 at 1 p.m. See tiff.net for information. Twitter: @shinangovani