{"id":574031,"date":"2026-05-09T03:03:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T03:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/574031\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T03:03:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T03:03:13","slug":"remarkably-bright-creatures-is-a-sweet-if-slight-melodrama-with-an-eight-armed-star","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/574031\/","title":{"rendered":"Remarkably Bright Creatures Is a Sweet, if Slight, Melodrama with an Eight-Armed Star"},"content":{"rendered":"

A friend of mine, generally not finicky, refuses to eat octopus<\/a>. \u201cI just can\u2019t eat any creature that\u2019s smarter than I am,\u201d he says, and he\u2019s got a point. Octopuses are adept at problem solving and hiding themselves from prey. They can use tools. They can distinguish one human face from another.\u00a0They even, possibly, have a sense of humor. All of those things might be enough to make you think twice about consuming that grilled, tentacled thing on your plate.<\/p>\n

Parts of Netflix\u2019s Remarkably Bright Creatures<\/a>, directed by Olivia Newman and adapted from Shelby Van Pelt\u2019s 2022 novel, might have the same effect. Sally Field<\/a> plays Tova Sullivan, an elderly widow who works nights as a cleaning lady at an aquarium on Puget Sound. Even though wiping away each day\u2019s worth of schoolkid grime is hardly anybody\u2019s idea of fun, Tova is OK with her job: nighttime solitude suits her, and she finds herself bonded with one of the aquarium\u2019s star attractions, a wiseacre octopus named Marcellus.<\/p>\n

We know Marcellus is a smartie because we can hear his thoughts\u2014they\u2019re voiced by Alfred Molina\u2014and he has lots of feelings about humans. He doesn\u2019t like living in captivity. \u201cThere\u2019s no quiet like the bottom of the sea,\u201d he says, gazing at a gaggle of noisy kids with his perceptive, penetrating eyes. Grownups aren\u2019t necessarily better. \u201cI am subservient to a species beneath me in every observable metric,\u201d he laments.<\/p>\n

Still, Marcellus is alive to beauty: he notes that the fingerprints schoolchildren leave on the glass of his tank are as \u201cintricate as a moonsnail.\u201d And as much as he’d like to deny it, he’s sensitive to these humans who have made him their prisoner, and he\u2019s deeply aware of Tova\u2019s pain, in particular. He sees that she\u2019s lost something, and he\u2019s right. Her only child died years ago, and she still wonders if she\u2019s somehow responsible for his death. She\u2019s also facing a bewildering choice: before her husband died, he signed the two of them up for a space in a retirement community. For decades, she\u2019s been living in an enviably cozy log cabin built by her father. Faced with the uncertainty of aging, she wonders if it\u2019s time to leave her home behind, though we can see she doesn\u2019t want to.<\/p>\n

\"Sally<\/p>\n

Sally Field as Tova with her octopus pal \u2014Courtesy of Netflix<\/p>\n

One day, a stranger chugs into town in a beat-up chartreuse-and-cream minivan. Lewis Pullman<\/a>\u2019s Cameron is on a mission. He tells the crotchety-amiable proprietor of the town\u2019s general store, Colm Meaney\u2019s Ethan, that he\u2019s looking to collect a debt. But his van has broken down, and he doesn\u2019t have the dough to get it fixed. Tova has just suffered an ankle fracture after slipping on the water-splashed aquarium floor. Maybe Cameron could take her place until she recovers? He grudgingly accepts the job, but because Tova can\u2019t stay away from the aquarium for long, she insists on dropping by to show him the proper way to mop, to polish, to wipe away everyday smears. As Marcellus looks on\u2014and when he\u2019s not escaping his tank for the occasional adventure\u2014Tova and Cameron form a bond. And Marcellus becomes convinced that these two unfortunate humans might have the power to heal one another, but only with his help.<\/p>\n

For an invertebrate, Marcellus is quite the busybody. And perhaps unsurprisingly, his hunch is correct: the story resolves itself in a small tidal pool of coincidence that\u2019s highly implausible but also comforting. Remarkably Bright Creatures does sag a little when Marcellus isn\u2019t on-screen: it\u2019s mesmerizing to watch him flit through the water in his tank, his supple skin the striated red of an old weathered barn, his tentacled arms beyond balletic in their grace. And Molina\u2019s voice-over<\/a> is so convincing you come to believe you really are hearing Marcellus\u2019 thoughts. Compared with that, the presence of mere humans can only be a disappointment.<\/p>\n

Still, W.C. Fields advised against acting with children or animals only because he never met Sally Field. The list of characters she\u2019s played over the years\u2014from Gidget to Mary Lincoln\u2014stretches behind her like a bright ribbon. But she knows how to be present in the moment, even when she’s acting with an octopus, and she makes Tova\u2019s suffering\u2014and her preference for solitude\u2014feel distinctive and lived-in. Pullman makes a perceptive, sympathetic match for her: you get the sense he pours more energy into listening than speaking. Remarkably Bright Creatures is a movie, like its cephalopod supporting star, with a gentle soul and an elusive spirit. It might not stick with you long, but it leaves a delicate print behind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A friend of mine, generally not finicky, refuses to eat octopus. \u201cI just can\u2019t eat any creature that\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":574032,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,196287,2839,196288,167995,137838,196286,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-574031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-marcellus","tag-movies","tag-olivia-newman","tag-remarkably-bright-creatures","tag-sally-field","tag-tova-sullivan","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/574032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}