Reflection on the "End" of Le grand bleu

Rating: 10/10 (29 July 2004)

I watched the extended version of this remarkable cinematic masterpiece with the ambiguous ending last weekend. I had never seen or heard of the movie before. And it has walked with me through my days ever since, playing on my mind.
I am told the alternate ending involved a reunion of Jacques to Johana, instigated by his friend the female dolphin (who he had helped release from captivity earlier in the movie).
I think this ending, if executed properly, would seem so much more complete, though I've read a lot of comments from people of all nationalities online that say this is the "Hollywood" ending. I don't agree. After reflecting on it, I think this ending makes most sense. Jacques had been living his life through the sea, and we witnessed how much pain his detachment had caused him, (for example in the scene where he cries to Johana). I think with Enzo's death he was at a crossroads. He could have chosen either direction: Life, or death in the sea. I think with the help of some friends (the dolphin) it would make sense that he should choose his life. Just as he freed the female dolphin from her captivity, she would have had the power to free him there in the end, by bringing him back to the surface, reuniting him with his humanity, which he had been in grave danger of severing ties with forever
Enzo's 'crossroads' was very different from that of Jacques, and ended in his death. He did not discover the true spiritual connection with the sea until the very last, but he had pursued it furiously. Up to that point, his diving had been an exercise to him in beating out the competition. He was convinced he could prove his superiority over other men, and over the sea, I believe. He was the one to summon 'the Frenchman' back into his life, knowing he might meet his true match in him, but to his continual frustration, Jacques was not interested in competing or in winning. Enzo finally experienced that life is not a competition. There can be great beauty in the experience of being small and weak in comparison to something. I think at the last moment, he chose the ultimate experience he found for himself there in the sea, though I'll argue it wasn't the sea itself that he chose. His actions in life demonstrated his fear of being "lesser than" and in the end he drew to him the ultimate experience of this. There is nothing on earth like the power of the ocean to impress upon us our minuscule size in this massive world of the relative. But it is my belief that there can be no true experience of one extreme without the exact opposite experience to accompany it. And that was the surprise for Enzo. That was what he had been looking for, but didn't realize. Enzo's final moments taking him to his death reunited him of course with That Which Is: the Divine within himself, and revealed to him that there is nothing else, not in the faces of the world around him, not in the hearts of men, not in the sea. There is nothing else. In the deep, black, depths of the sea, Enzo must have seen through his inner eye for the first time clearly, only to discover that the ocean, the earth, the universe itself--is all an illusion. A Grand Illusion.
His experience of the ocean's truth, that it is bigger than he, and bigger than any man however skillful at diving, was contradicted absolutely by this One Truth. And he united with this in a moment that precluded his life. And of course it was the most beautiful thing.
That's my thought.
I cannot say enough about the beauty contained within this movie, accessible to the viewer who will allow himself to be carried away, cast without expectation into the vastness of Le grand bleu.