I’ve been racking my brain to think whether I’ve ever laughed in a wildlife doco before. I don’t think I have. Could Prime’s Octopus (Jigsaw Productions) be the world’s first comedy wildlife film? I do believe so. In a world that’s got so serious it’s pure pleasure learning from the film’s wonderful subjects (human and otherwise). Meanwhile, what genius to pick Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag, Indiana Jones) to narrate. Because of her, the film achieves a previously unimagineable synthesis of reality and humour. Waller-Bridges has perfected the deadpan, dulcit tones necessary for serious undistracted nature commentary which, of course, are also the perfect offset for sudden laugh-out-loud moments.
The script was written by BAFTA award-winning writer Gabriel Bisset-Smith (Saltburn) and directed by Niharika Desai. Then there is the exquisite casting of octo-nerds: two octopus scientists, a Greek fisherman, a creative writer, a comedian and of course, Doris.
The film begins by exploring our profound and recent relationship with octopus. Such as the sooth-saying octopus that predicted World Cup wins, then, as Waller Bridge exclaims ‘four years later a depressed South African man went for a swim and met an octopus who taught him how to feel again’ … followed by a clip of the wonderful Craig Foster (My Octopus Teacher) looking depressed and exhaling defeatedly. My first laugh out loud moment.
Beware: you won’t like this film if you don’t have a sense of humour
Of course the film will upset people without a sense of humour. Since modern wildlife films are increasingly dull as dishwater, designed to forment eco-anxiety and use startling sudden death sequences to create conflict, such a breath of fresh air will be certain to cause confusion.
… humanity is the tonic that entertains while the rest of the film delivers the facts. Importantly, you’ll emerge unscathed, unbloodied and feeling good. What’s bad about that?
The Guardian has said ‘it must jar with the section in which ecologists and researchers stress the difficulties of understanding creatures so different from us and war against anthropomorphism’. I think the journalist must be referring to the moment when two orcas appear on screen and Waller-Bridge adds ‘… and these two arseholes’. Not far off what I’ve heard killer whale researchers say about them by the way.
Doris the macrame stop-motion octopus
The science-nerding critics must also have missed the fact that the film’s main character ‘Doris’ is in actual fact, a macrame, stop-motion octopus. Rather like the wonderful characters we grew up with in kids films … the ones we developed our love and fascination with nature from (no harm done there).
The incredible character was built by hand, articulated using ball-and-socket joints developed by an engineer and animated by three stop-motion experts.
The animation was produced by the team behind Mighty Oak and the modelThe process, either mathematically or in the human brain, of creating an internal version of something that we can refer to, to better understand how it functions and our place within. Scientific modelling is where we take the best knowledge we have and build a version of what will happen, if we assume certain parameters. For example, we might model More was built by Haley Morris. The following video for Hilary Hahn & Hauschka’s music was among the inspiration.
Anthropomorphism makes the world go ’round
Octopus! is packed full of wonderful science and approaches the subject of anthropomorphism head on – Waller-Bridge is even forced to apologise for its over-enthusiasm in the script. If anything, anthropomorphism is the humour, brought to life with Doris and the humanity of the colourful octo-nerds that smile and talk throughout the film.
That humanity is the tonic that entertains while the rest of the film delivers the facts. Importantly, you’ll emerge unscathed, unbloodied and feeling good. What’s bad about that?
It’s also how ordinary humans make sense of the world. For millennia we bestowed god-like qualities on animals. Most existing indigenous cultures consider animals to contain the spirits of their ancestors. Such is our connection to nature that bestowing human qualities on wildlife is normal. It’s not something to be feared. In Beastly Keggie Carew explains now that lack of familiarity has denied us learning.
‘The consequence to animals was a head-on collision into the widering wall that separated the human-non-human boundary. What gave it traction was our egos. How agog we were to hear about the great divide between special us and inferior them.’
The reduction of animals to scientific curiosities alone has reduced the chance of exploring possibilities that fall outside of a current way of thinking. This blinkered view of life has had consequences for how we treat wildlife and each other. Science is different. It has its place but it would be a lonely world without art, imagination, creative- and abstract-thinking to imbue nature with mystery.
I loved this film in the way I love music, theatre, painting, comedy and film that challenges the status quo. I think it makes Prime’s Octopus the world’s first comedy wildlife film. Plus, Phoebe Waller-Bridge has the perfect voice for nature flicks. It’s a rare skill to narrate such films so brilliantly.
