VOD Review - My Octopus Teacher

Nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 93rd Academy Awards, this film hopes to go the way of films like The Cove (2009), March of the Penguins (2005) and Winged Migration (2002). Those films all won the Oscar and have gone down as some of the most memorable nature documentaries in the past 20 years. Of course, numerous nature documentaries have been produced in that time for theatrical release and for television broadcast. What distinguishes this film, directed by Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed, from those aforementioned films and probably a large chunk of the nature docs is this film isn't just about observing animals in the wild from a distance being objective and non-interfering. This film is about man's relationship to nature and to certain animals. Specifically, it's about one man's relationship to one animal. It's not objectivity and it's not about non-interference.

It's about a man basically treating a wild animal as a veritable pet and wanting to interact with it like one would a house cat or a toy dog. That man is Craig Foster, a former filmmaker who has since become an underwater photographer. He lives in South Africa. We don't learn that much more about him, except that he has a son who is now a teenager. Foster was at one point suffering from depression. A form of therapy or a source of peace of mind came when he went swimming in a nearby kelp forest. One day, while swimming through that part of the ocean, he discovered an octopus doing something very strange or something he hadn't seen before. The octopus was curled into a ball and had covered itself with clam shells, making itself basically look like a rock. This film is basically Foster studying that octopus and trying to understand why it did that.

Foster was inspired by African trackers in the desert. He figured he would do what those trackers did, but only in the water and instead of tracking land-based animals, he would track this octopus. He did so everyday over the course of a year. This film marks that period, picking up significant days over that year. He details how the octopus lives, what it eats, how it hunts, what its abilities are and how intelligent it is, in terms of how it plays or just exists in its environment. If you've never seen an octopus, it's pretty incredible to see what it can do. It can camouflage itself, literally change the color and texture of its skin to mimic things it sees. It can shape-shift. It can also regenerate lost limbs.

A lot of the film though is Foster's veritable obsession with this one octopus and how he's mentally adopted it as a kind of pet. His narrow focus would almost make you think that this one octopus was the last one on planet Earth. When another octopus shows up, it's almost a shock, but Foster must be aware of other octopus. It's clear that octopus are solitary creatures, meaning they don't interact with others of their kind until mating and then no more for reasons that become tragically obvious, but still it's odd that Foster didn't want to track any other octopus other than this one female octopus and no others, even though again, it's obvious that another one is not that far.

It's fine that he wanted to focus on this one octopus and make this film more about his relationship with it. He does make efforts to befriend it. He seems to have a passion for nature and the water. However, it's never clear if he's tried to befriend other aquatic creatures and this is the only one that responded more positively. The film talks about how his befriending the octopus could contribute to its life negatively, but there's no more deeper examination of that. We don't get how his presence in the water constantly is affecting how all the animals behave. Plus, we see brief moments with Foster's son, named Tom, but we never hear from Tom or Tom's mother or any other family member to grasp how Foster's obsession with an octopus has affected his familial connections. In the end, all seems good and happy but there's no interrogation of that or details to how his life on land has changed.

The whole thing ends with the Sea Change Project, which appears to be an environmental group that consists of divers trying to protect kelp forests. This film though never explains from what kelp forests need protection. It also never explains, beyond observing them as Foster does, what the group actively does to protect those forests.

Rated G for all audiences.

Running Time; 1 hr. and 25 mins.

Available on Netflix.