Remarkably Bright Creatures plus Short Takes on some other cinematic topics
Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative. However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters, where I don’t think I’ve missed much anyway, though better options may be coming soon. (Note: Anything in bold blue [or near purple] is a link to something in the above title or the review.)
My reviews’ premise: “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”
(from "Garden Party" by Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band, 1972 album of the song’s name)
However, if you’d like to know more about rationale of my ratings visit this explanatory site.
Here’s the trailer:
(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge its size;
activate the same button or use “esc” keyboard key to return to normal.)
If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy). To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
WHAT HAPPENS: Set in the fictional Washington state seaside village of Sowell Bay (actually shot in the Vancouver, British Columbia town of Deep Cove and the Vancouver Aquarium), this movie essentially has 2 parallel—and ultimately intersecting—storylines: (1) The first is about Marcellus, an aging Giant Pacific octopus in Sowell Bay’s aquarium, who gives us his thoughts on his years-long captivity and his general distain for humans (we can hear what he’s thinking [voice of Alfred Molina], but he doesn’t interact vocally with any of the human characters) which often results in his retreat into camouflage so they’ll have trouble seeing him, even in plain sight; he often escapes from his tank, yet can’t leave the building so why no one ever puts a lock on the top screen I can’t explain; (2) The more complicated story involves elderly Tova Sullivan (Sally Field) who works as a night janitor in the building, frequently shares her grief with Marcellus about the death of her husband some time ago, the death of her teenage son, Erik (Brandon McEwan), much longer in the past (his watery demise was ruled suicide; she still hopes it was accidental); the other main character is Cameron Cassmore (Lewis Pullman), a new arrival come to the area in search of his never-known father, but when his rickety van (left to him when his largely-absent mother died) breaks down he can’t afford to have it fixed so he takes a temp job replacing Tova who injured her foot on a slippery floor (they get off to a poor start as she insists on showing up, telling him how to do all of his cleaning tasks). Somehow (I’m not clear), he thinks his missing father is local real estate guy Simon Brinks (Chris William Martin) so after he makes peace with Tova they find Brinks’ address, go to confront him. Although, when they arrive an elderly, angry man chases them away.
Our human protagonists slightly go their separate ways for a bit as Cameron becomes interested in Avery (Sofia Black-D’Elia), owner of a local paddleboard shop, but backs off when he learns she has a young son, laments that his band, Moth Sausage, is breaking up. Tova meets with her Knitwits knitting group (Joan Chen, Kathy Baker, Beth Grant), chances upon Adam Wright (Dan Payne), an old classmate of Erik’s who tells her about a girl, Daphne Cassmore (Sasha Craig), Erik was having a secret affair with. By chance, Brinks finds Cameron in a café, explains he’s not the young man’s father but simply a gay friend of his mother, with the fathers of both Daphne and Brinks furious with their children for who they are. ⇒Cameron has a high-school ring he found in Mom’s van which he thought was a link to Brinks so in disgust he throws it into the aquarium’s dangerous wolf eels tank. Then we’re back to Marcellus who escapes his tank to retrieve the ring despite getting deadly bites; Tova finds him and the ring, puts him in a bucket, tosses him off the end of a pier so he can die in his own environment, then realizes the ring belonged to Erik, so she and Cameron surmise Erik was Cameron’s father, Tova’s his grandmother. All’s well that ends well as Tova’s now open to attention from grocer Ethan Mack (Colm Meaney), Cameron stays in town to renew his interest in Avery.⇐
SO WHAT? Whenever possible I like to cite a site with more plot details than I’m recounting as I try desperately to keep these posting to a much more digestible size than was my usual procedure even just a few years ago; however, the Wikipedia site for this movie offers little, although you might enjoy this from Netflix (some Spoilers) with background on the production and this summary of the Shelby Van Pelt novel (2022; Spoilers where the adaptation’s concerned) the movie’s based on. I had some qualms about it as the final credits began to roll because it seemed to me that if Cameron had a reasonable idea about who his father was (even though he was wrong) and where the man was located, plus even though he didn’t have much interaction with his mother (as best I understood how his life had evolved) he knew her name and was able to be contacted by someone who knew who he was to pass on ownership of her dilapidated van, he wasn’t able to follow up on Mom, Erik, and Simon when he got to Sowell Bay rather than all of the floating plot lines resolved by pure coincidence, but if I wanted a feature film rather than a short subject I’ll just have to accept what the director and screenwriters Newman and John Whittington (along with novelist Van Pelt, whose plot strongly resembles the screenplay even though she includes other elements) offer.
One aspect of this movie I, in retrospect, was quite pleased with, though, occurs when Tova convinces Cameron to put his hesitation about his musical ability aside, take advantage of an open-mic in the local bar where he sings an acoustic version of Radiohead’s "I Can't" which I can barely tolerate or understand when listening to the original version, but in the softer one the opening lines of “Please forget the words that I just blurted out / It wasn’t me, it was my strange and creeping doubt” feel heartfelt to Cameron’s unstable situation. (Sorry, Radiohead; I’m just too damn old!) Those who find this story sappy (of which there must not have been too many among the novel’s fans which, apparently, was a big hit with its readership) or just too convenient in the manner the mystery of Cameron’s father is resolved will just have to further decide if they can stretch into acceptance of an octopus’ thoughts, but for me that made this whole experience quite intriguing, along with Field’s solid command showing how her acting skills haven’t deteriorated with age (79) since winning Best Actress Oscars (Norma Rae [Martin Ritt, 1979], Places in the Heart [Robert Benton, 1984]). The rest of the cast (even Marcellus, though mostly CGI) well-supports her also, for an heartwarming result.
(Sorry about the quality of this photo of Ethan and Tova; I didn’t have much to choose from.)
BOTTOM LINE FINAL COMMENTS: Given that … Creatures is a Netflix-only product you’d have to use streaming to see it (free to current subscribers; $8.99 a month [ads] or $19.00 [no ads]) where you’d get a generally-supportive response from the CCAL to do so: Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews at 83%, Metacritic average score notably lower, though, at 57% (however, just 18 responses so this might change later). Among the supporters is Stephanie Zacharek of TIME: “[Field] knows how to be present in the moment, even when she's acting with an octopus, and she makes Tova’s suffering—and her preference for solitude—feel distinctive and lived-in. Pullman makes a perceptive, sympathetic match for her: you get the sense he pours more energy into listening than speaking. Remarkably Bright Creatures is a movie, like its cephalopod supporting star, with a gentle soul and an elusive spirit. It might not stick with you long, but it leaves a delicate print behind.” Yet, some others must have provided negative reviews so here's an example from Variety’s Guy Lodge “[…] a fictional bouillabaise of moist-eyed melodrama, marine-life metaphor and all-purpose cod philosophy that, were it not title-bound to the bestseller it’s based on, could have opportunistically been called ‘My Octopus Therapist’ […] A hokey pileup of intersecting destinies and cornball coincidence, it hardly matches Marcellus’ own aloof intellectual tone […] Heavy on benevolent feeling and shy of outright human conflict, the film floats and sprawls and spirals like the creature to which it’s glowingly in thrall, but a bit of spine wouldn’t go amiss.“ So, Guy, no go, huh?
Clearly, I enjoyed … Creatures more than the negative opinionators, but even if it doesn’t sound like something you’d like to watch maybe you can content yourself with my usual finishing device of a Musical Metaphor, this time (What else could I choose?) The Beatles’ "Octopus's Garden" (1969 Abbey Road album) where, in some manner, Tova and Cameron could join Marcellus in his proper homeland: “We would be warm below the storm / In our little hideaway beneath the waves / Resting our head on the seabed / In an octopus’s garden near a cave.” Still, much of the movie belongs to the humans so, even as I’m slipping into Spoiler territory, I’ll also offer Paul Simon’s "Mother and Child Reunion" (1972 Paul Simon album)—"No, I would not give you false hope / On this strange and mournful day / But the mother and child reunion / Is only a motion away”—as long as you’ll sing along with it, slipping in “Grand” each time before he says “mother.” Maybe you’d also like to go for a swim now that the weather’s starting to warm up in some places (the undersea’s waiting for you).
SHORT TAKES
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