‘My Octopus Teacher’ may open your eyes to nature

Above: A scene from the documentary "My Octopus Teacher." (Netflix)

Movie review: "My Octopus Teacher," directed by Pippa Erlich and James Reed, featuring Craig Foster. Streaming through Netflix.

A few blocks from where my daughter and her family live in Brooklyn, their favorite pizzeria serves a tasty appetizer of grilled octopus. I always have to fight my grandchildren for even just a couple of bites, and so we often order a second helping.

That, though, was life as we lived it pre-pandemic. I’m not sure when, if ever, we’ll return to that restaurant – assuming it’s still in business. And, truthfully, after watching a Netflix documentary titled “My Octopus Teacher,” even if I do return, I doubt if I’ll ever eat octopus again.

The film centers on Craig Foster, a documentary filmmaker who in 2010 had hit an emotional wall in his life. After working for some two decades, making such films as his 2000 study of Kalahari bushmen titled “The Great Dance,” he felt drained. Unable to work, and feeling as if he were failing in his role as a father, he retreated to the world he knew best: the sea.

For Foster, born and raised on the coast of South Africa, his quest took him to a particular kelp forest not far from where he lived. Every day he would enter the cold water, wearing only a pair of swim trunks, fins, a mask and snorkel, spurning use of a wetsuit and air tanks because, as he explained, he wanted to feel as close to the environment as possible.

And that’s when he first encountered the octopus.

“My Octopus Teacher” focuses on Foster’s relationship with a common octopus and the lessons about life in general, and his own life in particular, that the relationship taught him. Directed by Pippa Erlich and James Reed, the film depends largely on highly visual footage that Foster himself shot. Erlich and Reed blend that imagery with an ongoing interview of Foster, all overlaid by the narration that he provides.

It was in 2010 that Foster began free-diving in the kelp forest. And one day he chanced to see something strange. It looked like a ball that had been coated with a collection of shells and other debris. Pretty soon, though, the ball revealed itself as an octopus, which darted away, leaving the shells to fall in its wake.

Curious, Foster began a daily search for the eight-armed mollusk. After finding it, he began what would become their year-long inter-species liaison, each successive day labeled auspiciously on screen.

It started slowly and, as Foster explained, he made a number of mistakes. It took a full 26 days before he was able to exchange touches with the octopus. But then he dropped a camera lens, and the startled animal fled. Foster searched for days before the two were able to reconnect. And over time, they again reached a kind of accord, one that involved a mutual sense of curiosity – and maybe even acceptance.

That, of course, tests the limitations of the anthropomorphism we humans tend to engage in. Foster was witness to the intelligence of the octopus, not just in finding ways to avoid predators by disguising itself with shells, but in tricking other sea life in order to feed itself. And it does seem as if he was able to commune with his new friend. But we’ll never know what the animal was thinking. Or feeling. Not really.

Still, “My Octopus Teacher” is less about the octopus than it is about Foster’s own reaction to it. He agonizes as he sees it threatened by a particular predatory species known as a pyjama shark, losing one of its appendages in the struggle. He is heartened when, days after losing track of it, he discovers it recovering, hiding and yet slowly gathering strength anew as it regenerates its lost member. And over the year-long period that he films the octopus, particularly when he sees it eventually mating, he faces with a growing sense of sadness the reality that his friend’s life is nearing its end.

Yet as the documentary’s title suggests, the experience left Foster with a fresh appreciation of life. And it helped him repair the ties with his son, whose own introduction to free-diving reflects his father’s new-found kinship with the world around them both. As Foster explains, he no longer feels separate from the world. He knows he’s as much a part of it as it is of him.

I’ll try to keep that in mind when, or if, I ever return to that Brooklyn pizzeria. I’ll still eat pizza, and maybe even a dish or two of the house pasta. But octopus? No.

That much “My Octopus Teacher” taught me.