CREATURE COMFORT (MY OCTOPUS TEACHER)

 

Great nature documentaries unlock mysteries about creatures most of us will never see in their natural habitats.

David Attenborough has become something of an international treasure for the insights he has given us into the animal kingdom.

Documentaries like Luc Jacquet's 2005 Academy Award winner 'March of the Penguins' have also rightly been celebrated.

James Reed and Pippa Ehrlich's BAFTA winning feature documentary 'My Octopus Teacher' is, however, more than just a nature film.

It's about a deep bond that develops between the South African cameraman and producer Craig Foster and a single octopus over the course of almost a year.

It has all the wide eyed wonder of a great nature documentary.

It has all the breathtaking visuals.

But it may also have you reaching for a tissue to sob into as well.

Narrated by Foster and using stunning underwater footage he and Roger Horrocks shot in a kelp forest in False Bay near Cape Town, it is a story about a man rediscovering a zest for life through nature.

At the start of Reed and Ehrlich's film, Foster admits he was a pretty broken man when he arrived in the Cape.

The director of the acclaimed 2000 documentary 'The Great Dance: A Hunter's Story' about animal trackers in the Kalahari Desert, he had lost his love for filming nature.

Losing that love for filmmaking was impacting on his family life.

Keen to be a good father to his son Tom, he relocated the family to False Bay which he loved to dive in as a boy.

He reveals getting back into the water provided a form of healing.

"The cold upgrades the brain," he explains.

Returning to the kelp forests, Foster starts to explore the underwater world and revels in its magnificent array of marine life.

Diving among the crabs, lobsters, the pilot fish, enenomes and the striped pyjama sharks, he catches sight of a female octopus and is drawn to her as she hides from him.

Intrigued by the way she peers at him from behind her defences, he feels compelled to encounter her again and understand her life.

Using tracking techniques similar to those the tribesmen used when he filmed his first documentary in the Kalahari, Foster succeeds in tracking her down.

Eventually an extraordinary relationship develops as the octopus begins to assess whether he poses a threat to her and realising he is not, becomes increasingly curious to the point that she envelops his hand.

Foster obsessively chronicles his daily encounters with the octopus over 300 days, as he watches her hunting techniques and how she avoids capture and death.

A remarkable bond is struck with the octopus and, like Foster, we become increasingly in awe of its intelligence as she learns how to catch crabs and lobsters and penetrate their shells.

In another nailbiting sequence, we see how she managed to give a determined, yet increasingly frustrated shark the slip.

There are moments of great joy, great wonder and danger.

And the marine photography by Foster and Horrocks, who worked on Attenborough's BBC show 'The Blue Planet,' is at times mesmerising.

Reed and Ehrlich's film owes a lot to Attenborough and they follow the legendary nature broadcaster's playbook to the letter.

By humanising the octopus, they ensure their audience are invested to the extent that they feel every moment of peril and of joy.

Cynics might bash the film for being mawkish and playing its audience's emotions like a violin.

However you would have to be made of stone not to feel moved by the adventures of the octopus and astounded by its cunning.

Foster founded the not for profit Sea Change Group which is dedicated to the preservation of marine life and the kelp forest off the South African coast.

Ten years in the making, 'My Octopus Teacher' is a great advert for that important work that he is doing.

It will also whet your appetite for films that reveal more of nature's most incredible survival acts on land, sea or air.

But it may also be one of the most extraordinary love stories you will see all year.

('My Octopus Teacher' was released on Netflix on September 30, 2020)