Silent World

Silent World

I recently picked up a copy of Jacques Cousteau's book Silent World, and fell into the most awesome waking dream, into the upper strata of the abyss, flying through water, snatching spiny lobsters from sea caves, and devouring the bounty. It was one of those feverishly warm nights last week. I used the book as a tool for hypnotic induction, as an antidote to the insomnia, and it worked beautifully!! I ultimately fell asleep on a sofa on the front porch, right at the cusp of dawn with the Silent World resting on my chest, and when I awoke hours later, the book had mysteriously vanished. Nowhere to be found. I wonder if had really been reading Jacques Cousteau or if I had dreamt it.


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Then, again recently, the Silent World resurfaced in a different form. A friend, a fellow underwater enthusiast (she is also a licensed diver) brought over the 1956 Louis Malle film, which we projected onto a big white wall in my new loft. The loft itself has the feel of an underwater garret -- 30 foot ceilings where the skylights leak every time it rains, and the space reverberates with the pattering of water. At night, an ultramarine blue light downwells through the roof. It was the perfect film to inaugurate the space and the projector. 


In all of these years, I'd never seen a Cousteau film. Here, in Silent World, a grey and gaunt Capt. Cousteau stands at the healm of the research vessel Calypso, earnestly pillaging the sea, reverently observing while massacring all life in his path, trailing crimson stained wake. He has an aura of aloof and enigmatic power akin to Verne's Capt. Nemo -- it's difficult to tell how much of this character is contrived by Louis Malle. 


Watching Silent World, there's a thrill that comes from the jankiness of the diving apparatus, the Aqua-Lung (invented by Cousteau and Gagnan), an early precursor to modern scuba gear. The pioneers risked (and some lost) their lives going too deep with experimental tanks and regulators, diving down to depths of over 200 feet wearing scarcely anything but speedos! They were the first humans to literally get high on the depths. The medical term for this condition is nitrogen narcosis, but it is more poetically referred to as the "rapture of the deep." After descending too quickly, nitrogen gases infused in the bloodstream cause inebriation, a dangerous delirium for a diver. There's a great scene illustrating this in the film in which the drunk diver attempts to remove his mask, then swims up too fast. The pressurized gases pop like a bottle of champagne. As the diver begins to experience symptoms of the bends, aching joints and muscles, Cousteau has him slide into a claustrophobic chamber to decompress, while the others enjoy a feast of spiny lobsters. A story with a moral. 

We were particularly shocked and awed by a grotesquely beautiful scene in which the team of naturalists explode TNT underwater to instantly kill all the sea life within a large radius of a coral reef, and then collect and bottle all of the specimens.
On a pile of freshly dead tropical fish, a swollen puffer beats its fins and gasps for oxygen as it deflates, water draining from all orifices. You see a diver eviscerating a giant sea cucumber -- fish and eels that live in its gut spill onto the deck of the ship. 


In another scene, a baby whale swims under the ship and gets fatally wounded by its propellor (the narrator expresses remorse). A swarm of ravenous sharks comes to feast on the thick marshmallowy flesh, and as they feed, Cousteau's crew hook the sharks by the gills and haul them aboard.


Perceived barbarism aside, the undersea imagery rivals any that has been produced since . Like Jean Painleve's recently released collected works-- Science is Fiction -- the raw, organic discoloration of the film combined with intensely visceral imagery and absurd (hard to take too seriously) narration, delivers a powerful dose of surrealism.