To me, this film beautifully illustrates what the late, great French philosopher Giles Deleuze meant when he talked about "becoming animal." In the process of "becoming animal" one morphs into an "other" not by means of imitation or filiation, but through contagion: via the affective and psychological "contagiousness" of joining a new assemblage / "pack" / ecosystem.
What blew my mind was how emotionally, physiologically, and intellectually attuned Craig Foster became to the local marine environment world. An emblem of phenomenological sensitivity, he exhibited our forgotten potential for achieving augmented perceptivity and adaptability within a wild, unfamiliar milieu.
In particular, Foster's anecdote about his fascination with the Hadza hunters in Tanzania and his admiration of their immense acuity to the…