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| The Big Blue Le Grand Bleu | |
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 Theatrical poster | |
| Directed by | Luc Besson |
| Screenplay by |
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| Story by | Luc Besson |
| Produced by | Patrice Ledoux |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Carlo Varini |
| Edited by | Olivier Mauffroy |
| Music by |
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Production company | |
| Distributed by | Gaumont Distribution (France) Weintraub Entertainment Group Columbia Pictures (United States) Filmauro (Italy)[1] |
Release dates |
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Running time | 168 minutes |
| Countries | France United States Italy |
| Languages | English Italian French |
| Budget | FRF 80 million[2] (est.US$13.5 million) |
| Box office | 9.2 million admissions (France)[3] $3.6 million (USA)[4] |
The Big Blue (released in some countries under theFrench titleLe Grand Bleu) is a 1988drama film directed byLuc Besson. Inspired by theCinéma du look movement, the film is a heavily fictionalized and dramatized story of the friendship and sporting rivalry between two leading contemporary championfree divers in the 20th century:Jacques Mayol (played byJean-Marc Barr) andEnzo Maiorca (renamed "Enzo Molinari" and played byJean Reno), and Mayol's fictionalized relationship with his girlfriend Johana Baker (played byRosanna Arquette).
The film became one of France's most commercially successful films (although an adaptation for US release was a commercial failure in that country). French PresidentJacques Chirac referred to the film in describing Mayol, after his death in 2001, as an enduring symbol for the "Big Blue" generation.[5]
The story was heavily adapted for cinema. In real life, Mayol lived from 1927 to 2001 and Maiorca retired from diving to politics in the 1980s. Both setno-limits-category deep diving records below 100 metres, and Mayol was indeed involved inscientificresearch into human aquatic potential, but neither reached 400 feet (120 metres) as portrayed in the film, and they were not direct competitors. Mayol himself was a screenwriter for the film,[6] and Mayol's search for love, family, "wholeness" and the meaning of life and death, and the conflict and tension between his yearning for the deep and his relationship with his girlfriend are also major elements of the latter part of the film.
Children Jacques Mayol and Enzo Molinari grow up inAmorgos,Greece in the 1960s. Enzo challenges Jacques to collect a coin on the sea floor but Jacques refuses. Jacques' father—who harvestsshellfish from the seabed usinga pump-supplied air hose and helmet—goes diving. His breathing apparatus and rope gets caught and punctured by rocks, and weighed down by water, he drowns in front of the children.
By the 1980s, both are well knownfreedivers. InSicily, Enzo rescues a trapped diver from a shipwreck. He is a world champion freediver and now wishes to find Jacques and persuade him to return tono-limits freediving in order to prove he is still the better of the two. Jacques works as ahuman research subject with dolphins and is participating in research intohuman physiology in the lakes of thePeruvianAndes, where his bodily responses to cold water immersion are being recorded. Insurance broker Johana Baker visits the station and is introduced to Jacques. After hearing that Jacques will be at the World Diving Championships inTaormina, Sicily, she fabricates an insurance problem that requires her presence there, in order to meet him again. The two start dating. However, none of them realize the extent of Jacques' allurement with the depths. Jacques beats Enzo by 1 metre, and Enzo offers him a crystal dolphin as a gift, and a tape measure to show the small difference between their respective records. Johana goes back home to New York but is fired after her deception is discovered; she leaves New York and begins to live with Jacques. She hears the story thatmermaids appear to the ones who truly love the sea and lead them to an enchanted place.
At the next World Diving Championships, Enzo beats Jacques' record. The depths at which the divers compete enter new territory, and the dive doctor suggests they should stop, to no avail. Jacques is asked to look at adolphinarium where a new dolphin has been placed, and where the dolphins are no longer performing; surmising that the new dolphin is homesick, the three of them break in at night toliberate and return her to the sea. Back at the competition, other divers attempt to break Enzo's world record, but each fails. Jacques succeeds, reaching 400 feet (120 m). Angered by this, Enzo prepares to break Jacques' record. The doctor warns that the competitors must not go deeper, as the pressure becomes lethal at those depths. Enzo dismisses the doctor and attempts the dive anyway but is unable to return to the surface. Jacques dives to rescue him. Enzo, dying, tells Jacques that he was right and that it is better down there. He begs Jacques to help him back down to the depths, where he belongs. Distraught, Jacques refuses, and Enzo dies in his arms. To honor his dying wish, Jacques takes Enzo's body back down to a depth where the human body becomes negatively buoyant, and lets his friend sink into the depths. Jacques—himself suffering fromcardiac arrest after the dive—is rescued by supervisingscuba divers and requires his heart to be restarted with adefibrillator before being placed in medical quarters to recover.
Jacques appears to be recovering from the diving accident but later experiences ahallucinatory dream in which the ceiling collapses and the room fills with water, and he finds himself in the ocean depths with dolphins. After discovering she is pregnant, Johana returns to check up on Jacques but finds him lying unresponsive in his bed with bloody ears and a bloody nose. Johana attempts to help him, but Jacques gets up and walks to the diving boat and gets suited up for one final dive. Desperately, Johana begs Jacques not to go, saying she is alive but whatever has happened at the depths is not, but he says he has to. She announces she is pregnant and begs Jacques to stay. However, she eventually lets him go. The two embrace and Johana breaks down crying. Jacques then places the release cord for the diveballast in her hand, and—still sobbing—she pulls it, sending him down to the depths. Jacques descends and floats for a moment, staring into the darkness. A dolphin then appears, and Jacques lets go of his harness, swimming away with it into the darkness.
The original ending (with Jacques swimming into the ocean's depths with a dolphin) was intentionally ambiguous;[citation needed] even though considering the depth Jacques has swum to, it appears highly unlikely that he could regain the surface alive.
In the American adaptation, the ending is extended with an additional scene, where it is shown that after swimming away with the dolphin, Jacques is returned to the surface.
The film was heavily fictionalized. In real life, Jacques Mayol and Enzo Maiorca were indeed champions and contemporaries. However, they did not directly compete, neither reached 400 feet, and neither died while diving.
Mayol was indeed involved in scientific research into human aquatic potential, and was fascinated by dolphins, and was recorded as having a heartbeat that slowed from 60 to 27 beats per minute when diving. He held numerousworld records, including dives to below 100 metres. After a bout of depression, he killed himself in 2001, long after the film's release.
Maiorca (renamed as "Enzo Molinari" in the film) also set numerous depth records from 1960 to 1988, despite involuntarily retiring from the sport for over a decade between 1974 and 1986 after an outburst on TV cost him a competition ban. He entered politics in the 1990s, and became a member of theItalian Senate for a time. For many years, he resisted public showing of the film in Italy, as he considered it to caricature him poorly; after Mayol's death in 2001, he relented and accepted the showing of the film.
Besson was initially unsure of whom to cast in the main role of Mayol. He initially offered the role toChristopher Lambert andMickey Rourke and even considered himself for the role until someone suggested Jean-Marc Barr. Besson has acameo appearance as one of the divers in the film.The Big Blue was the most financially successful French film of the 1980s, selling 9,193,873 tickets in France alone, and played in French theaters for a year.
With its extensive underwater scenes and languid score (as with nearly all of Besson's films, thesoundtrack was composed byÉric Serra), the film has been both praised as beautiful and serene, and in equal measure criticized as being too drawn out, overly reflective and introspective. While popular inEurope, the film was a commercial failure inNorth America. The American version was recut to include a simplified "happy" ending, and Serra's score was replaced with a soundtrack composed byBill Conti. This version was only available onVHS andLaserDisc in the United States (both with 4×3 pan-and-scan transfers) and is currentlyout of print. The director later released a longerdirector's cut onDVD, featuring the original ending and an extended version of the Serra score.
Much of the film was shot on the Greek island ofAmorgos, where Agia Anna and the monastery of Panagia Hozoviotissa can be seen. The film was dedicated to his daughter Juliette Besson, who required surgery after becoming ill during filming.
The film was met with positive reviews in Europe, where it was described as "one of the most significant cult movies of the 1980s" by French Cinema historian Rémi Lanzoni,[9] who described it as "ooz[ing] with a sensuous beauty unlike any other film at the time".[9]
The film was slightly edited for US release to have a new, positive ending and the original score was also replaced.
The US release was met with above average reviews. The film aggregator,Rotten Tomatoes gave it 62%, based on 21 reviews. The website's critics consensus reads, "Though this movie features beautiful cinematography, it drags on, being way too overblown and melodramatic."[10]
Kevin Thomas of theLos Angeles Times, praised its cinematography, but warned viewers to "be prepared to want to come up for air only minutes into [the film]", referring to the film's pointless plot.[11]
The film sold only 97,817 tickets in its opening week in and around Paris but went on to become one of themost popular French films of all-time in France with admissions of 9.2 million.[3]
The Big Blue was nominated for severalCésar Awards and wonCésar Award for Best Music Written for a Film (Éric Serra) and Best Sound in 1989. The film also won France's National Academy of Cinema's Academy Award in 1989.
The film was screened out of competition at the1988 Cannes Film Festival.[12]
Andrzej Malinowski's film poster forThe Big Blue received aCésar Award nomination in 1989 from theFrench Academy of Arts and Film Techniques.[13]
The film was released on DVD on 21 July 2009.[14]
ABlu-ray version containing both the extended and theatrical versions was released on September 14, 2009, in the United Kingdom, but this contains French-dubbed versions of both cuts, rather than the original English language. This was later corrected and the second release contained a LPCM 2.0 English soundtrack and a DTS 2.0 French dub. The French Blu-ray release contains only the Director's Cut of the film but with a French DTS-MA 5.1 soundtrack and is supplemented with Besson'sAtlantis documentary on Blu-ray as well.
A poster for the film can be seen in the photo studio in the 1992 South Korean filmThe Moon Is... the Sun's Dream.
In1993, theIsraeli singerSharon Lifshitz released the song "Ha'ish Me'hayam" (האיש מהים - The Man From The Sea) which was written byTzruya Lahav and was based on the film.
In the 2009 Japanese anime seriesEden of the East, Akira plays the film in his villa's cinema for Saki, who was a big fan. The title of the episode, "On the Night of the Late Show", is a reference to this scene.
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