Butler's Cinema Scene

“MY OCTOPUS TEACHER” My rating: A- (Netflix)

85 minutes | No MPAA rating

No nature documentary you’ve ever seen will quite prepare you for “My Octopus Teacher,” a heart-gripping tale of a friendship (one might even call it a romance) between a human and a mollusk.

This film is a transcendent experience.

Craig Foster is a South African maker of nature docs who several years ago underwent an unspecified professional and personal crisis and retreated to the oceanside vacation home in which he had spent his boyhood summers nearly three decades earlier.

Craig Foster

He found himself drawn to an offshore kelp forest and its aquatic denizens. Despite the chilly water Foster declined to wear a wet suit in his explorations as it interfered with his sensory connection with this watery world; for the same reason he eschewed heavy scuba gear in favor of a simple snorkel, which required him to resurface regularly to take a fresh breath.

It was on one of his casual floats through this environment that Foster came across an octopus. He was initially drawn to this creature because it had used its eight tentacles to collect and grasp an assortment of empty shells, thus camouflaging itself either for protection from predators or because it hid her (the animal was female, though the film never tells us how you sex an cephalopod) from her intended prey.

In any case, Foster was intrigued enough by this sophisticated behavior (a mollusk employing tools?) to seek out the octopus on subsequent dives. He found her den beneath a rock shelf and decided to return every day to study this magnificent alien creature.

Just as important, he was moved to pick up his underwater camera and record these adventures.

Other documentarists have obsessed over the astonishing properties of octopi…for instance, their ability to instantaneously change the color and texture of their skin to blend in with their environment, or to compress their bodies to slip through tiny cracks. Or their multiple brains (a couple in the head, others in the arms).

But for Foster, who recalls his experiences in an awed whisper that suggests some sort of religious conversion, this becomes much more than a case of detached scientific observation.  At one point the octopus — he never gives it a name, thank God — becomes so accustomed to Foster’s presence that it sends out a slender tentacle to wrap around his finger, eventually clutching/stroking his limbs in a case of exploration that soon evolves into, well, a friendship.

Foster (and the viewer) is hooked. He returns day after day to follow his new buddy as she goes hunting (employing a variety of sophisticated techniques to trick the crabs and lobsters that she prefers).

He also observes the octopus being hunted by the voracious sharks that populate the forest. Foster tells us that he had to make the decision early on not to interfere with the natural order of things (the sharks were small enough that he could have easily posed a threat to them)

One of the problems with befriending this particular species of octopus is that they have a lifespan of only a year.  Which meant that Foster’s time with the animal was limited.

Amazingly, he was on hand to witness her mating (something rarely observed by even the most experienced marine biologists) and to see her deposit her fertilized eggs in the back of her den, watching over them until they hatch.

The emotional power of “My Octopus Teacher” is so profound that most viewers will find themselves moved to tears by what many regard as one of nature’s creepier creations.

That we reach this point is due both to the film’s astonishing visual beauty and to Foster’s first-person testimony.

Foster, who made most of his dives solo, is credited with the film’s underwater photography. In addition to capturing intimate moments of octopus life, he set up his camera in such a way as to film himself interacting with the mysterious creature.

The credited directors are first timer Pippa Erlich and James Reed (his 2015 documentary short “Jago: A Life Underwater” centered on an 80-year-old Indonesian who with a single lungful of air dives to great depths to hunt sea creatures). Apparently they incorporated Foster’s octopus footage with additional material of him swimming through the kelp forest or walking the seashore. And they conducted the usual talking-head interview sessions.

The result is a visually ravishing experience.  Some of these shots are simply breathtaking.

And then there’s Foster himself, who guides us through the emotional transformation precipitated by this unexpected experience. For a man who had spent his career not identifying with his animal subjects, the octopus ushered in a road-to-Damascus-level turnaround. The only word that really sums up his testimony here is reverent.

in a very real sense “My Octopus Teacher” is a prayer.

| Robert W. Butler