Before I begin, from here on anyone who disagrees with what shall follow is academically malnourished and lacks high vibrational intimacy in their romantic endeavors. That being said, the short film Oktapodi is the marine equivalent of a love story like that of Harley Quinn or Romeo and Juliette.
The film sets in the land of Greece, by the ocean in a city named santorini. We can only hypothesize that it is recent times from the technology of the scale and the car that threatens the star-crossed lover. Safe in their tank, the octopi could not have been happier to have each other, until they were separated by greater power. The owner of the octopus man-handles the female to be weighed and sold to a seafood restaurant. The male takes this as a challenge like Invictus and goes out to rescue his eight legged lady friend. As we sit on the edges of our seat, the Hero is finally one with his lover and we climax as the driver falls into the ocean. But fate being the cheeky bastard that it is, conflict hits again as our supported hero is taken away by a malicious seagull. Before the screen blacks out into an endless pit of nothingness, we see the princess fling herself back in such dominance to save her man, a truly feminist-girlboss-queen-behavior moment.
If one must contain the essence of the film into a theme it would be; prolonging the inevitable. To begin with, the reason the octopus decides to save his lover is because of the logo on the truck. He realizes that she will be murdered in a seafood restuarant. However, if he is capable of comprehending the societal result of octopuses in seafood restaurants, he most probably is capable of comprehending the situation that he was in initially. There are dead fishes surrounding the store, the table where the weighing and selling of fish is in visible distance from the tank, and it is reasonable to assume that there were other octopuses in the tank that got sold in front of his eyes. Therefore, the only available options are;
The female’s death followed by the death of the male.
He saves her from the driver but they both die with no sustainable water source.
They come back to the tank and get sold and killed to another buyer.
(Note that the octopuses are oblivious of the ocean till they see it mid film.)
The Irony is that at the moment of choice, the male octopus knew that his action would only result in death. Nonetheless, the male chooses to save his lover. Why?
Wonder no more, for here lies the answer. As I mentioned before,the tank was empty besides the two octopuses, which means they have experienced the loss of other octopuses that were in the tank considering that octopuses have an average life span of 3-5 years. Being the only two that survived the massacre of their friends, it is clear that they have formed a trauma bond to each other. It explains how they are overly affectionate (especially physically) to each other, despite the fact that there are corpses surrounding them and a killer machine in front of their eyes. The empty tank symbolizes toxic environments that create fake intimacy in order to avoid facing the trauma. A fine example of this would be the relationship Harley Quinn and Joker have.
Furthermore, one can claim that the octopuses do not symbolize love but the attachment that we consume ourselves with in order to escape fear. Although there are several fear factors in the film such as loneliness, death, and loss, these are all inevitable. The octopuses know that death is inescapable, for they have seen the fate of octopuses in the tank, and for the situation that they lie in (explained above). Yet they keep fighting to prolong the inevitable for what can be accessed as codependency. The only constant variable in their uncertain lives they have is each other. When one feels overpowered by fate, they cling onto what makes them believe in free-will. The octopuses are not afraid of dying as they subconsciously know that it will happen, they are afraid to lose each other and realize that they are powerless specks of dust in an ever expanding universe that will exist just fine without them. It's nice to find someone who makes you feel special, when the forces of nature proves you wrong. The sense of co-dependency is what doomed Romeo and Julliette.
