My Octopus Teacher

In keeping with the fame of YouTube's adorable octopus video(s), Netflix has released My Octopus Teacher, a stunning documentary that follows an octopus, shifting from one aqueous locale to the next.

It's a nature documentary like no other, focused on one flexible beastie in particular, not a seal or a dolphin or a whale, but a camouflaged octopus, hiding away.

Undaunted by the challenge of locating the same octopus every day for months in chilly water, Craig Foster proceeds like a diligent inspector, and learns to find clues in the imposing seabed, until enough knowledge is acquired for routine confidence.

He's inspired by African tribespeople who can track wildlife in manifold forms, because they read their environment like a book that's as logical as it is multifaceted.

I encourage pursuing higher learning at length or at least for as long as it compels you, but that doesn't mean people who don't acquire a formal education simply sit back and shut off their brains.

They just apply their intelligence to alternative variables just as rich with imaginative wonder, never tiring of intellectual endeavour, as it relates to non-scholastic rhythms. 

Thus, you find ingenious indigenous peeps who can't read or write or use a computer, who still understand their natural landscapes like surgeons preparing for open-heart surgery.

Hence, Foster doesn't give up, as he slowly teaches himself to track octopi, his troubles compounded by a lack of oxygen, or having to constantly resurface.

Total respect for such aquatic ambition, tracking earthbound wildlife seems much lighter in comparison, tack on the cold and the fluctuating visibility, and you've got wondrous herculean composure.

Planet Earth 2 seems like the apotheosis of nature documentaries, with countless shots of remote terrains, terrains that are incredibly difficult to access, its material presented with vigorous narrative.

But nature documentaries are vast and consistently mutating, finding new ways to resiliently captivate, My Octopus Teacher a remarkable feat of filmmaking ingenuity.

Plus Foster is interviewed throughout and provides thoughtful commentaries about his labours, which capture the stages he patiently went through as he learned more and more about his shifty subject.

The octopus isn't exactly chillin', indeed things are rather intense when sharks come a' callin'.

But he eludes them as best he can.

A must see examination of a fascinating creature.