This is a biography of Jacques-Yves Cousteau. Just like Valerie
Taylor in PLAYING WITH SHARKS, Cousteau started with spear
fishing and dynamiting to count fish, but ended as a strong
environmentalist. Cousteau describes being underwater like
being in heaven, where you have no gravity; it is utterly
fantastic. His earliest interests were in flying (also in a sense
a realm of decreased gravity), but a bad accident convinced him to
change track to deep-sea diving and brought him to a fascination
that would obviously last his whole life.

Although the photography is in monochrome at the beginning (due to
the constraints of early underwater photography), some shots or
parts of them are then colorized, either realistically or in a more
psychedelic fashion. Interviews with Stuart Paton (20,000 LEAGUES
UNDER THE SEA (1916)), and Louis Malle discussed some of the
constraints. Malle's film with Cousteau, THE SILENT WORLD, won the
Oscar for Best Documentary, though Cousteau says, "Our films are
not documentaries. They are true adventure films."

The demands of the environment under the sea suggested to Cousteau
technical inventions for better exploring and understanding that
environment, including the aqualung. World War II interrupted his
diving but when it was over, new opportunities with the Navy came
along in terms of exploring sunken ships and planes. When diving
using the aqualung, he could see much more under the water, but
there were dangers from "Rapture of the Deeps". His dedicated
ship, Calypso, a refurbished mine sweeper, first sailed in 1951.
In 1953 he was offered a job in oil research, and found (among
other things) Abu Dhabi's oil. Later he found himself regretting
some of these choices.

Cousteau made many films and television shows. The first episode
of "The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau" was about sharks;
Cousteau was far less sanguine than Valerie Taylor about sharks'
natures, though his attitude was never that there should be a mass
slaughter of them. Cousteau also once foresaw a time when people
would live in cities under the sea, but came to reject that idea.
BECOMING COUSTEAU goes into how Cousteau's views evolved and how he
got involved in saving the ecologies of the seas and oceans. These
days nearly every documentary about nature will contain a downbeat
note that the world we see is being destroyed by the selfishness of
people, and this film is no different.

Caveat: The subtitles for French-speakers are very badly done, with white-on-white making them hard to read.

Released theatrically 10/22/21. Rating: +1 (-4 to +4), or 6/10.

Film Credits:
<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10334438/reference>

What others are saying:
<https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/becoming_cousteau>

--
Mark R. Leeper

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