If the science here is less than rock-solid, that’s somewhat beside the point. After all, the sharks aren’t the ones apparently bonding with Foster himself, while his gradual buildup of trust with his octopus subject, culminating in tender scenes of hand-to-sucker contact, leaves us duly misty-eyed. We also observe her crafty sneak-attacks on her own prey, her seemingly whimsical taunting of passing shoals of fish, and further outwitting of those sharks, whose villainous edit here (complete with tense, zithery music cues) may be rather unfair in the grand circle-of-life scheme of things, but fits the film’s tidy, family-friendly storytelling. This is the first of several canny survival strategies that Foster narrates in order to sell us on the octopus’ remarkable humanoid intelligence and occasional sense of play. The female octopus in question is but one attraction in a splashily filled coloring book of wafting kelp, electric-bright fish, knobbly crustaceans and darting, Beetlejuice-striped pyjama sharks - a consistent threat to our tentacled friend, and the reason we first encounter her in a state of camouflage, clenched and covered in a makeshift cloak of shells to escape the predator’s notice. Iridescently shot by ace underwater specialist Roger Horrocks (responsible for some astonishing imagery in the BBC’s “Our Planet” and “Blue Planet II” series), the film’s extraordinary below-seascapes are clearly the outcome of painstaking study and exploration. The polished construction of “My Octopus Teacher” suggests nothing quite so spontaneous. As Foster tells it, freediving in the local seaforest near his Cape Town home provided the therapeutic balm he was looking for a surprising soul connection with a spirited octopus was an unplanned bonus.
#Octopus teacher pro
Handing the directorial reins to eco-journalist and first-time helmer Pippa Ehrlich and nature-doc pro James Reed, Foster settles into an unusual combined role of presenter and protagonist: somewhat indulgently so at the outset, as he talks viewers through a period of professional burnout he experienced some years ago, spurring a renewed urge to connect with the natural world.
The bluff, affable Foster, for his part, has been working that beat for 20 years, since the release of his 2000 documentary “The Great Dance” - a survival study of the indigenous San people in the Kalahari Desert that netted some international distribution, but nothing like the exposure granted his latest credit.
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