Submarine

Grade: C+

I have been thinking a lot lately about talent. Like the fact that we live in a world where often times it’s not how talented you are but rather how talented people think you are. Think about it like resumes and cover letters for jobs. You could have been a terrible employee at an impressive job and you would still get a lot of interviews based off that job on your resume. I think this is especially prevalent in the creative fields. It’s been well documented that people tend to fall up, regardless of how talented they actually are. Most of the time I spend thinking about this is about the people who had the talent yet never became anything with it. Either this be through lack of exposure, never trying, or personal anxiety holding them back. It’s entirely possible that the top 10% of extremely talented people in any given field either never use their talent or create something great that is never seen. Think about how many great creations we have, and then think about how many more potentially even greater creations we have never seen.

Sure some people believe that no matter what talent has a way of rising to the top and getting noticed, but I tend to believe that that is extremely naïve thinking. This is because the ability to be great at something usually comes at a cost of something else, and more often than not that something else is marketability. Honestly, ask yourself how many people do you know that are without question talented or brilliant at a particular thing, and how long did it take you to realize this? Talent is extremely difficult to convince someone of in a thirty minute interview and almost impossible on one or two pieces of paper. Brilliant people get overlooked everyday by someone who is just better at looking brilliant than they are. Studies have even shown this. It has been reported that often the more competent you are at something the less confident you are about it because you know so much and the more knowledge you have on something the less simplistic it is to define of give a definitive stance on it. In the inverse people who are not competent (or at least not to a great degree) are often more confident about that thing because they are often unaware of their incompetence and just assume they have a full understanding on things. Talent becomes hurt by its talent, and someone who is less talented but either better at establishing connections, better at selling themselves (these are often very much one in the same), or simply look better on paper unjustly takes their spot. These musings don’t really have much to do with Richard Ayoade’s Submarine, but it does have something to do with its director.

Ayoade is one of those people who I went from never hearing anything about to instantly popping up everywhere I look. First, I was looking for a new show to watch on Netflix when I stumbled onto The IT Crowd (a British show about some nerds who work in the IT department for a company, and if you’re wondering I still don’t really know how I feel about it) where Ayoade plays the memorable (which I can’t decide if in a good or bad way) Moss. A few days later I’m watching a trailer for the new Ben Stiller movie Neighborhood Watch and there pops up Ayoade again. Then as I’m skimming through the comments I see someone mention the movie Submarine while talking about Ayoade popping up in the trailer. Submarine just happened to be the next movie in my Netflix queue and it was literally on its way through the mail when I read that. I had known next to nothing about the movie and definitely didn’t know Ayoade directed it. I got it because a few websites I read said that they enjoyed it and I thought I should give it a shot. I then look up on IMDB before writing this review and learn that he directed one of the more interesting episodes of Community (the My Dinner with Andre one). Overnight he had become everywhere I looked, and this made me skeptical. It’s easy to assume that because someone is getting popular it’s because they are talented and everyone wants them, but then I started to think again about talent and how, especially in movies, people can fall up. Then I began to ask myself “did I enjoy what he has done?” and “do his future projects look promising?” But really what I was asking myself was “is he what you would call talent?”

When I think of talent I think of someone with a distinct style. Quentin Taratino has a distinct style about him, as do the Cohen brothers, and other great directors. In film they call them Auteurs, and so I guess the question then becomes: is Ayoade and auteur? For that I have a definitive answer and it is no, which was my problem with Submarine.

Story wise Submarine is nothing new. A young, precocious outsider named Oliver falls for a popular girl named Jordana. Through a series of quirky events they begin dating and much of the story follows their relationship. Meanwhile, Oliver begins to suspect his mom is going to leave his father for the over the top, oddball neighbor Graham. So on top of having to deal with his own relationship Oliver tries to take matters into his own hands with his parents relationship as well (because he is precocious and intelligent beyond his years and in the movie world this is what kids like him do). None of that is too groundbreaking of storyline but I will say that it is well written, and the characters never feel like the caricature’s they seem like they would naturally be. Well besides Graham, but I believe that was intentional.

The problem is this has all been done before by Wes Anderson. In fact if I was going to summarize this movie in one sentence I would say “Submarine is like a Wes Anderson film without Bill Murray getting his awesomeness all over things.” Oliver is just a British Max Fischer. The parents are just about any parents from any Wes Anderson movie, distant and somewhat bored/defeated with/by their life. Even when Oliver is trying to fix his parents relationship it feels like I’m watching Rushmore again. Only instead of a fondness for red and yellow it’s red and blue.

The part that feels the most derivative though is the direction. Something that has always bothered me about Anderson’s movies is his love of the unnecessary whimsy and quirk. I’m not against either of those things but when done for no reason it becomes a bit much. It can’t just be fish; it has to be a fish made out of felt or claymation. Ayoade feels the need to do this too. Rather than just soaking in the moment of Oliver feeling overwhelmed by all that is going on in his life, he turns Oliver’s room into the ocean as him and his bed begin to sink. He can’t just hastily ride his bike back to his house to tell his father something, the sky has to transform into a kaleidoscope effect. It’s all cute imagery but completely unnecessary.

But what is even more frustrating about this movie is that there is a really touching and honest story about youthful romanticism and middle aged complacency that is being overshadowed by all the quirkiness. Even though Graham is a very obvious caricature, there are real people that are every bit as much of a caricature that impressionable people like Oliver’s mom do fall for and then contemplate and sometimes do leave their steady, unexciting significant others for. Oliver and Jordana get together over the quirkiest of quirky ways and are a hyper-quirky couple when together, but their relationship goes to some very real and very difficult places for a young couple.

Because of all this I knew that Submarine was going to be a movie I needed a day or two to sit and think about. My kneejerk reaction, like any movie that had trouble walking the line between stylish and intelligent, and over-stylish and cutesy, was that I didn’t like it. But then the more I think about it, the more I find myself enjoying the story and the characters. This is why it got me thinking about talent as talent is often misunderstood at first, then appreciated later as people have time to let it soak in. Ultimately I’m left with a feeling that while I appreciate Submarine, I didn’t particularly enjoy it. So going off this I don’t think Ayoade is someone I would label a surefire talent, but his movie certainly got me thinking about it and that’s a good start.