Movie Details
EAGLE VS SHARK. (2007)
Director-: : Taika Waititi
Cast-Loren Taylor Jemaine Clement Craig Hall
Movie type- Comedy/Romance
Release date- 03 August
IMDB Rating-6.7
Languages- English and Spanish
Duration-1 Hour 33 Minutes
Trailer
Synopsis
The eagle, the king of the skies, the ruler of the air and the shark, a powerful fish that has as much in common with the eagle as the sky and water – seemingly nothing. Nevertheless, somewhere on the horizon, two elements meet and unite forever. Their grip is unimaginably strong. After all, it is he who defeats the red giant every evening, which, wandering through the eagle’s kingdom, reaches the surface of the water only to lazily immerse itself in the shark’s world. So there is an incredibly strong bond between the sky and the seas and oceans, the air and the water, the eagle and the shark, one could say – there is a feeling comparable to love.
What appears to be a paradox may not actually be a paradox at all. An eagle can love a shark with an unusual, but sincere and selfless love – true love. There is always hope somewhere on the horizon, and it has the fabulous power to overcome all paradoxes, the power to unite opposites, the power that allows love to change the lives of two lost people, just as the wave of a magic wand changes the fate of fairy-tale heroes.
With a smile on his face
Taika Waititi proves the thesis presented above by creating a modest film under the patronage of New Zealand. His Eagle vs. Shark is a game of juggling conventions. It is a demonstration of the valuable ability to tell stories about difficult – and let’s be honest – unpleasant – topics in a pleasant way, filled with a whole spectrum of positive emotions. The young director constructs a modern fairy tale, which replaces the groups of elves and mermaids with two life’s dissenters, for whom good fun is synonymous with parading in the costumes of their favorite animals and wasting time competing in the field of computer games. Their lives differ in almost every aspect, they have two things in common – loneliness and a certain fast food restaurant – they are the mentioned horizon, a gate that opens the way to self-fulfillment in the sad world of people without characters and ideals.
From the very first minutes of the story of the eagle and the shark, the corners of our mouths unconditionally move upwards and remain there for almost the entire duration of the film. They remain because the director does not feel sorry for the characters’ alienation and internal dramas, but on the contrary – he tries to turn their weaknesses into advantages and paint their problems in warm and kitschy colors, because in our lives the dead gray of normality and the black of pessimism take a heavy toll. Lonely and complex people do not have to live in a world without color. And they deserve a pinch of fairy taleness, a pinch that can tip the scales towards returning to normal life. Waititi’s undisguised optimism is intensified by the never-silent music, mostly created by the New Zealand band Phoenix Foundation, and animated inserts showing the adventures of a certain abandoned apple core, which, like the main characters, is looking for its land of happiness.
About finding yourself
The poetics of the film itself brings to mind the journey of the Hoover family, i.e. the award-winning Little Miss Miss Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton, which debuted a year earlier and was showered with awards. Comedy lazily mixes with drama, the action calmly moves forward, and everything exudes sincere optimism, which is placed between the frames in a way that is convincing enough to be communicated to the viewer. Apart from a similar language, the films share similar themes, because both the American independent gem and the New Zealand comedy talk about searching for oneself, about trying to find one’s way in this strange reality that has grown outside our windows.
While Little Miss Sunshine has won almost everything filmmakers can dream of – BAFTA, Oscar, Golden Globe – Eagle vs. Shark has so far remained somewhat underrated. In this situation, we are happy that he was noticed by the organizers of TOFIFEST, a Polish festival taking place in the city of Copernicus. There, in the eighty-year-old “Orzeł” cinema (a funny coincidence), he received an award named after Zygmunt Kałużyński (for set design and costumes) and an award granted by film journalists publishing on websites (best film).
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