My Octopus Teacher

This unique documentary would have had a strong appeal for me even if I hadn’t gone through a childhood phase of wanting to be a marine biologist. The film invites us into a world that is ours, even though most of us don’t know it. 

Watching this documentary is a contemplative experience. For a while, I wanted to make the filmmaker’s underwater journey into a metaphor – and I’m sure that could be done. But I soon gave that up and preferred entering the experience of watching and absorbing the film as an act of contemplation unto itself.

Questions that can’t be put into words arose while watching. But approximations are ponderings like, “What is going on here?” and “What shifts in my feelings about the universe?”

OK, writing the latter question makes me nervous because I know some people will watch this and wonder what on earth goes through my head. Of course, everyone will see a film like this in their own way. Maybe it even functions a bit like a Rorschach test – providing an ambiguous stimuli upon which we all project our own meanings.

More prosaically, there is amazingly beautiful photography, and the narrator’s journey is told with humility and humanity. And, it must be said, this Netflix film has nothing whatsoever to do with politics – and perhaps that is enough reason in itself to watch it and is the source of its healing potential. I’ve seen reviewers refer to it as a love story. True enough, but one quite unlike what you’ve seen before. **** and a mug held high.