Author Shelby Van Pelt must be pleased; book-to-film translations aren’t often treated with this much respect.
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| Although Tova (Sally Field) finds it difficult to share her private anguish with anybody else, she confides everything to Marcellus, the Giant Pacific octopus who resides in the oceanarium where she works ... and he understands far more than she could imagine. |
But the buoyant, rapturous result definitely captures the story’s heart, and all three key characters are portrayed marvelously. The supporting players also are well cast; my only complaint is that we don’t get to spend enough time with some of them.
(Just in passing, one must acknowledge the unlikely coincidence of getting two octopus-themed films in such short order, following 2020’s My Octopus Teacher.)
The film opens with a voice-over introduction by Marcellus (voiced gravely, and oh-so-perfectly by Alfred Molina), a Giant Pacific octopus who is the star attraction at the (fictitious) Sowell Bay Oceanarium, in Washington’s Puget Sound. He morosely begins by acknowledging that this morning is “Day 1,404 of my captivity.”
Marcellus laments that he is “subservient to a species beneath me in every possible way,” and has little use for the throngs of people who visit each day. That’s particularly true of the grimy, obnoxious young children who press their noses against the glass tank, or lick it, and leave greasy fingerprints that become a “tiny mural”: an admittedly disgusting image that Newman highlights from Marcellus’ point of view.
(One must admit, were an octopus — or any other critter — to be that sentient and intelligent, such on-display captivity would be an ongoing nightmare.)
Marcellus makes an exception for Tova Sullivan (Sally Field), the elderly janitor/cleaner who, after hours, spends each evening lovingly wiping all the aquarium glass, scraping chewing gum from the floors, and otherwise washing, buffing and scrubbing everything thoroughly. She’s particularly fond of Marcellus, and confides in him, somehow feeling that he understands her.
To a degree, he does. He recognizes that she carries a deep sorrow: “I felt the hole in her heart.”
Marcellus also is quite the escape artist, able to slip out of his tank when impelled by boredom or curiosity. We suspect that he periodically visits other tanks, while pointedly avoiding the one that contains savage wolf eels.
