There’s a touch of Spielbergian human-alien connection in the story it tells, a sense of wonder and mystery enhanced by Kevin Smuts’ score. Unlike the cinematically daring Gunda, which removes the human voice from its narrative, to profound effect, Teacher is very much about interaction between humans and other species, and its positive potential.
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There isn’t a telltale seam in the immersive proceedings, not a crack in the exquisite aquatic palette or the underwater light. Beyond the lengthy editing process, a team of postproduction whizzes had to make footage from a wide array of cameras visually cohesive.
My Octopus Teacher is a dazzling technical achievement, especially when you consider that helmers Ehrlich and Reed and editor Dan Schwalm were faced with 3,000 hours of footage, shot over a period of eight years that began long before Foster encountered the title animal. In turn, his interactions with the octopus inspire a friend of his, cinematographer Roger Horrocks, to join him in the surf with his camera. It turns out that his curiosity is matched by that of the octopus he visits in his daily dives, and she inspires Foster, who had explored animal tracking and shamanic cultures of the Kalahari in films he made with his brother, to pick up his camera again. But Foster is so likably low-key and humble a screen presence, and his point of view is so interested in the other, that any such fears are quickly dispelled. For a few brief moments in its early going, My Octopus Teacher threatens to veer into the dreaded territory of New Age self-help. The urgency to heal himself was heightened by his desire to be a good father to his school-age son, Tom (who eventually becomes a diver in his own right, as well as providing the film’s drone footage).
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In voiceover and onscreen interviews, Foster explains that he returned to diving, a childhood joy, at a point when he felt depleted by work and unsure how to go on. “The cold upgrades the brain,” he tells us. At the outset of his adventure, the invigorating cold is also a lifeline for him, a way back to a sense of purpose. He wants a direct experience with the environment, and aims to be as nonintrusive as possible among the fish and mollusks. Its waters are, however, bracingly cold, dipping below 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and Foster goes in sans wetsuit or scuba gear.
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The story unfolds with deceptive simplicity and startling beauty in a patch of sea off South Africa’s Western Cape that’s protected by a thick kelp forest, and therefore relatively calm. But it is the first to chronicle a single sea creature’s story from such a personal, openhearted perspective, revealing not just emotional connections but animal behaviors previously unknown to scientists. My Octopus Teacher is not the first documentary to plunge us into the otherworldly flora and fauna of Earth’s oceans - a number of films from MacGillivray Freeman and Imax have done so in magnificent fashion.
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