I have a big blue chest that sits in my room and acts as a catch-all for a lot of random stuff whenever I find I don’t have some place to put it. At this very moment it has a deliberately placed collection of watches and rings; two change jars, as well as the more miscellaneous bib and medal from the half-marathon I ran, a piece of art I’ve been meaning to hang for a week, a book whose spine I haven’t cracked in a month, some scrap paper with piano notations, and some McDonald’s coupons that are likely expired. It’s that kind of surface. For a long while the inside was no different. Whenever I would move I’d inevitably be faced with a random assortment of power bars, wrapping paper, and other homeless things – so into the chest they went as I told myself, assured myself, that I would figure it out later.

Finally “later” happened and about a month ago I cleared the top, opened the chest, and began sorting through everything. There was quite a bit of garbage in there that felt good to finally throw out, and I filled a box that is still sitting by the door waiting to be dropped off at a donation center, and it felt good. Amongst all that stuff were about a dozen notebooks that I’ve filled over the years – actually close to a decade. A mish-mash of everything that had been going on in my life at any given time – drafts of letters, thoughts on events, story ideas, partially constructed and ultimately abandoned stories. It was at once exciting, but also a little depressing. All this work, these half-started projects abandoned; I had been doing this for so so long and what did I have to show for it? What had I actually committed myself to, finished, and sent out into the world? Shockingly little. I’d always had this image, this identity of myself as a writer, and that was quickly crumbling around me.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, written and directed by Wes Anderson, is one of my favourite films. I can remember a friend asking me if I wanted to see it when it first came out in 2007. I hadn’t even heard of it and asked him what it was about. “Bill Murray’s friend gets eaten by a shark, so he’s trying to hunt it down.” Sounds awesome, let’s do it. And so we went, and we laughed, and it was a good time. This was my first introduction to Anderson’s work as well which was another eye opening experience for another essay. And we all left the theater in agreement; great film, 10/10, very funny; and we went about our evening and our lives.

Something about it stuck with me though. I love re-watching movies but this one entered the roster like few before it; perhaps Blade Runner (1982) and I’m Not There (2007) are on the same level. One of those sick or rainy day movies. We had a tradition in my family that on someone’s birthday we’d get together, have a dinner of their choosing, and watch a movie of their choosing – or at least start it. Much to the chagrin of my family I always chose The Life Aquatic, and they’d quickly find reasons to wander away and leave me to watch it on my own. “I just don’t get it,” they’d tell me. They didn’t follow the humour, didn’t understand the point of the story, or the appeal of it. It might have helped if they stayed until the end, but that’s beside the point because really, did I understand the appeal myself? I loved the idiosyncratic humour, but what else resonated with me so strongly that I watched it every few months, and why did the ending leave me so drained?

In thinking about it now I realized there are two aspects, two storylines, which jump out at me. There is the larger narrative of Steve grappling with his identity, and the final moment when he confronts the Jaguar Shark.

Steve Zissou is a man quickly approaching the end of his career, in fact maybe it should have ended long before the movie begins but he’s trying to hang on, to cling to the image of himself as the popular and successful documentary filmmaker. That is slowly crumbling in the face of the lukewarm reception of his most recent film. After the screening there is a Q&A period but the audience seems wholly uninterested in it as they struggle to come up with boilerplate questions like, “Was it a deliberate choice not to show the Jaguar Shark?” and “What’s next for team Zissou?” There was a monumental moment of his life captured on film, the death of his best friend Esteban du Plantier, and no one seemed to care. Some people didn’t even believe him, as if it were some sort of P.R. stunt. Outside the screening a man behind the velvet ropes calls out to Steve and asks who he plans to kill off in Part Two.

There is this image of himself that no one believes anymore, and if no one believes you are who you say you are, than who are you? What if you start believing them over yourself? This is something I grappled with as I looked at all those notebooks. There was no outward voice calling me out, no man behind the velvet rope calling me a bad writer, but as I looked at how little I had accomplished in the last ten years, even worse, how little I had tried, that voice rose up inside my head. You are a phoney, a fraud, a writer writes and gets the work out there – finishes it. Your ideas are half-cocked, locked up in these notebooks and buried at the bottom of a chest. For so long I had wrapped myself in the identity of a struggling writer – but was I struggling or just not trying? I suppose that’s one difference between Steve and I; whereas he was trying and failing, I had secured myself in this identity so well that I didn’t want to move passed it.

Throughout the film there is a reporter named Jane Winslett-Richardson following Zissou around as he completes the second half of his documentary and hunts the Jaguar Shark that ate his friend. She was a big fan of Steve’s when he was younger, and it was her idea to write a story about him for the Oceanographic Explorer magazine. She admits later in a heated moment, “This entire article was my idea, no one else gives a shit,” further breaking down Steve’s identity of himself. He thought the article was what people wanted. They wanted to know what the great Steve Zissou was up to next. Turns out that no, it’s really a passion project by one reporter who doesn’t even have an expense account. Later they share a moment up in Steve’s hot air balloon, she remarks she had the same image of him tacked up on her wall all through primary school. “Oh, yeah? You mean the official photograph, where I’m doing this? […] Well, maybe it’s just me, but I don’t feel like that person. I never did.” That is a hard thing to grapple with, the realization that you might not be who you thought you were. Because along with that comes the next question; if I’m not who I thought I was, than who am I?

I looked at the stack of notebooks and thought that very thing. I was a writer, I had the notebooks to prove it, that much was true. But what had I really done with that writing? Most of it sat trapped within these hardback covers. I wasn’t pushing it further. That shook this identity I had created for myself, or maybe reinforced it; the identity of the “struggling” writer. This extended further as I began to wonder, if I am not this idea I had of myself, than who was I? I felt faced with a choice – I was no longer the struggling writer, I didn’t want that. Than who did I want to be?

This is one central question that isn’t addressed in The Life Aquatic. We witness the breakdown and questioning of Steve’s identity, we see when he decides to be honest, with himself and his audience. During the lightening strike rescue operation through an abandoned hotel and resort, Steve trips and falls down the stairs. This is all part of the documentary they’re making and being filmed. He asks his cameraman Vikram Ray if he caught that. “Good,” he says, “We’ll give them the reality this time. A washed-up old man with no friends, no distribution deal, wife on the rocks, people laughin’ at him, feelin’ sorry for himself.” We see the honesty with who he is but we don’t see that moment where he decides what he’s going to do next, where he decides who he’s going to be. Which is fine, it’s all right to leave more questions than answers. The film ends with him having finished the film, people love it, he’s won an award; things seem to be as they used to be, how he imagined them being. He’s a well-known and respected oceanographer and documentary filmmaker. And yet he seems unfulfilled. What comes next? He doesn’t know, but there’s some beauty in that because, “This is an adventure.”

There is a thrill to that. I look at these books that I’ve filled out over the years, padding this identity of an author for myself. I’m questioning the validity of that identity as I feel I haven’t done much to earn that title. This is good, it’s healthy to question who I am, my motivations, my actions, and what they say about me. But I need to take it further. The question shouldn’t be, “What do I do, and who does that make me?” I should shift and ask, “Who do I want to be, and what do I do to get there?” That’s the adventure. So I have given it some thought, and I love writing, I love stories, so I’m going to keep doing this. But the attitude and method have changed. I used to struggle with what I thought I ‘needed’ to do; as a writer, to become an author, you need to do this, or need to do that. You need to have an online presence you need to write to an audience, you have to be marketable, etc. In reality I don’t NEED to do anything. I can do it the way I want, what makes the most sense for me. Looking at myself the only things I need to do are write and share that writing.

And this applies to all aspects of life. Every day you wake up to a new day, and a new choice about who you want to be.

There is one more scene in the movie that just devastates me. I don’t think it fits into this theme of identity that I have been exploring, but I cry every time I watch it so I’m going to explore it and shoehorn it in anyway. It’s the climax of the film; they’ve tracked the Jaguar Shark, everyone is piled into the tiny submarine named Deep Search, and they finally go down to confront it.

The scene is built up perfectly, though I may be biased talking about my favourite movie. Everyone is gathered together in these tight quarters watching, waiting, it’s quiet. They see that first sign that has always proceeded the shark, the school of Fluorescent Snapper come swimming through and swarm the tiny submarine as they pass by. There is a faint red flicker of light, the homing beacon. The music swells up as the illuminated spots of the shark appear. And then there it is, the Jaguar Shark. Everyone looks on in awe as it swims by its size dwarfing the submarine. And Steve asks, “I wonder if it remembers me?” and I bawl along with him.

Everything that happens in this movie is in pursuit of this one singular goal. It began with the death of Esteban; nobody seems to care about Steve’s new documentary, they struggle to get funding, Steve meets his maybe-son Ned, Steve’s wife leaves him, they get shanghaied by pirates, there’s a mutiny on the ship, they fight the pirates again in the lightening strike rescue op to save their bond company stooge, Ned dies in a helicopter accident; all of this happens while – and largely because of – Steve’s relentless chase. He’s fixated on one goal; revenge. The Jaguar Shark looms so large in his mind, and in his life, and when he finally sees it again he’s faced with the inconsequentiality of his life. Because while he’s been so focused on this shark, it hasn’t even given him another thought. There’s hope in that line, “I wonder if it remembers me,” but ultimately realizing that it doesn’t.

And that’s the fear. To tirelessly work in the pursuit of a single goal, put everything you have towards only to fail in getting there; or worse, to get there and realize – it didn’t matter. Nothing changed. No one noticed. You worked and sacrificed and for what? Nothing.

This is how I always read the film, and it’s saddening. But as I analyze and write this I realize, maybe there is hope. Maybe it doesn’t matter that it doesn’t matter. As they all watch the shark Steve’s (ex)wife Eleanor remarks, “It is beautiful, Steve.” And maybe that’s it, maybe that’s enough. It’s the lead up, the experience, the fact that you accomplished something, if only for yourself. And that is beautiful.