This is one of my all time favorite moments in film, and Zissou one of my all time favorite characters. The poignancy for me of this scene stems from its bookending quality: when we’re first introduced to Zissou his best friend has just been eaten alive by the “jaguar shark”, and upon surfacing, just before his classic exchange with Klaus about “hydrogen psychosis” and “crazy eye”, and in an aside that’s barely caught by the microphone, Zissou’s foremost concern is to ask if the camera is still rolling. And here, after a long expedition which was ostensibly about exacting revenge on the shark that killed his best friend, Zissou comes face to face with his white whale and his first instinct is to wonder if the shark remembers him.
This is why Zissou is so meaningful to me. It’s not that he’s vain and narcissistic, it’s that he’s so shamelessly vain and narcissistic. He’s weak. He’s fragile. He’s the antihero who can’t help but want nothing more in life than to be the hero.
Add me to the set of fans of Z. I love the movie, the details you can find in it, which go from an amazing soundtrack to a G.I. Joe in one of the walls. The actors are great, even though Owen Wilson is in the movie (I really hate his acting…)
