(courtesy IMP Awards)
If you had someone die who was absolutely central to your world, and whose absence makes it feel considerably smaller and barren, then you will understand the wholly disorienting sense of everything feeling like it just STOPS.
The world might keep moving around you with its customary noise and vigour, but you are becalmed, frozen in time, unable to see a way forward with any meaning, substance or purpose.
This can last a little while or a whole lot longer – grief is, as has been oft observed, unique to each person – and in the case of Tova Sullivan (Sally Field in superb form), the quietly grieving protagonist of Remarkably Bright Creatures, based on the 2022 novel of the same name by Shelby Van Pelt, it has gone on for years with the local aquarium owner unable to see a way forward after losing her husband to illness and her son to a drowning accident at sea.
She has, in the words of one of her “Knit Wit” (knitting and crocheting )friends – Barb (Beth Grant), Mary Ann (Kathy Baker) and Janice (Joan Chen) – stepped away from “the business of living” and can’t seem to find her way back, her life lived after hours at the aquarium and in the same house she’s lived in for decades which functions more as a memorial than a vital home filled with current love and future memories.
It’s highly possible, despite the urging of her friends and the barely-disguised romantic interest of local grocery store owner Ethan (Colm Meaney) that her life would have continued on the same uneventful course if she hasn’t fallen at work, spraining her ankle, necessitating the employment of a new young guy in town, Cameron (Lewis Pullman) as her temporary replacement.
Ethan arrives in town in a clunky old van, which almost immediately breaks down, forcing him to stay put, and happily for the story of Remarkably Bright Creatures, and to spend time with Tova who takes him under very fussy wing which includes the right way and the wrong way to clean the aquarium which has, in many key ways, been Tova’s salvation.
This is where things get a little magically real in some incredibly heartfelt and grounded ways.
During her long nights cleaning the aquarium, Tova has bonded with Marcellus, the resident Giant Pacific Octopus (GPO), to whom Tova unloads gossip and the concerns of heavily burdened heart.
Voiced with an affectionate arrogance by Alfred Molina, Marcellus, who came to the aquarium after he was injured in the kelp beds nearby, believes he is innately superior to all the people who visit the aquarium, his only concession to that observation being that some people, such as Tova, and later Ethan are “remarkably bright creatures”.
Marcellus takes it upon himself to bring Tova and Lewis together, sensing in both of them deep wells of grief – Ethan’s mother has recently OD’d and he’s arrived in Sowell Bay, Washington – Vancouver, Lions Bay and Maple Ridge stood in for the fictional town – and a desperate if unspoken need for them to find connection with someone who could be instrumental in them finding healing.
In fact, Marcellus (who is mostly CGI, part film of an actual GPO known as Agnetha) has intuited something neither of these two people have, something that those with sharper, narratively observant minds will work out long before the revelatory final scenes of Remarkably Bright Creatures and he is determined to connect Tova and Ethan in a deeply emotional fashion before he dies, something which is close to happening throughout this beautifully affecting and emotionally nuanced gem of an indie film.
What is truly remarkable about this film is how a relationship between a GPO and a very lonely, sad, shutdown cleaning lady becomes the driving central emotional anchor point of the story; Tova, of course, doesn’t hear Marcellus speak, a privilege open only to viewers (and readers of the book) but the connection is undeniable with the GPO and it sustains not only the emotional tenor of the movie but much of its narrative momentum.
There is such a rich poignancy to how Tova interacts with Marcellus and if you never thought the relationship between an octopus and a human could absolutely rip your heart out and leave you in copious tears, not once but often, then you need to reconsider and watch Remarkably Bright Creatures.
Marcellus is the catalyst for the growing friendship between Ethan and Tova who, in line with the GPO fairy godfather, who may be arrogant but who is also warmly caring and determined to help the people he actually likes, come to see in each other the kind of kindred spirits they have been unknowingly craving.
Quiet and assuming in tone and pace but packed with big “E” emotion, the kind that anyone who has dealt with lingeringly powerful grief will know only too well, Remarkably Bright Creatures, written with compelling insight and startling empathy by John Whittington and director OIivia Newman, is one of those films that can’t help but speak to you.
We all need a second chance at life when it crashes and burns and Remarkably Bright Creatures is all about what that is like and how, while its genesis and execution may be wholly and utterly unique, it is central to all of us if we are to find our way back to the “business of living”.
It’s impossible not to watch this film and not feel a deep and abiding kinship with all the characters who reflect such a moving commonality of human experience lived in the very worst of times that you feel as if they have reached into your heart and projected your deepest feelings up onto the screen.
It is that kind of film, and it is astonishingly, sweetly, hopefully beautiful, with Remarkably Bright Creatures being not only a delight to watch because of the stunning landscapes and small town cosy vibes but because it offers light out of the darkness, not only for its central once-broken characters, but for all of us watching who need to find a way to go on living when it very sadly ends for those we love.