I confess, at first I was a little hesitant to watch the documentary “Billy & Molly: An Otter Love Story,” given its National Geographic TV premiere earlier this month (now with other streaming options). Anything to do with animals always gets me right in the heart. Even if there’s not death, there’s bound to be separation, and nothing has the potential to devastate me like separation from an adorable otter. I was taken to see “Ring of Bright Water” when I was a kid, and I think it must have traumatized me for life. If the film doesn’t end with an otter wearing a houndstooth vest having tea with a guy, chances are I probably won’t be able to handle it.
I am proud of myself, then, that, the likelihood of sobbing be damned, I committed to viewing it. This artistically-framed, gorgeously-shot, deeply-moving film not only delivers on the promise of love, but is full of wonder and wit and, yes, depending on your level of sensitivity, pretty much guaranteed to have you furtively wiping away a few tears as it quietly restores your faith in humanity.
A lost otter turns up on a man’s dock outside his home in the Shetland Islands (the northernmost region of the United Kingdom). It’s undernourished and unsteady and wrestling to get meat out of a crab. The man, Billy, quickly deduces this must be the pup of a mother otter he had seen dead at the side of the road. He has no idea what to do, but he decides to name the pup Molly, and his little, loving gestures deepen into a kind of paternal bond. They also have evident effect, as Molly begins to regain her health and, in her way, repay the investment. Soon Billy and the otter are inseparable.
What follows is a parallel revivification of both their lives, and also a revitalization of the lives of Billy and his wife, Susan. The movie is as much about the human couple, who take turns narrating the film, as it is about the otter who changes them. Seesawing between patience and exasperation, Susan assists with the installation of a second freezer, as the first has been packed solid with haddock for Molly. At the same time, she shrewdly observes the transformative effect this unusual friendship is having on her husband. A later wrinkle, concerning the installation of WiFi, is hilarious.
The film’s tone is simple, occasionally wry, and unsentimental, as stoic as Billy is, in fact, understanding that all the warmth and emotion is inherent in the story itself. At points, narrative is stripped away entirely, and we are left only with the beauty of loving interaction. Okay, there are one or two places where you may be overwhelmed by cuteness. I don’t want to ruin anything for you, but just imagine what kind of shelter Wes Anderson might create if he were to befriend a wild otter.
There’s also an unflappable sheepdog named Jade, who just loves her ball so much, carrying, catching, and headbutting it everywhere (including in a highly-amusing, fabricated dream sequence).
Director Charlie Hamilton-James finds beauty everywhere. What could be less prepossessing than the idea of winter in sub-arctic Shetland, you might think? But Hamilton-James discovers poetry in raging black seas and austere crags, and amusement and philosophical reflection in a local ceremony involving the ritualistic construction and destruction of a Viking longboat.
It might be tempting to dismiss Billy’s job at a utility plant as soul-crushing. But again, Hamilton-James frames his visuals such as to imbue the hard hats, the file boxes, the blast furnaces, and the grapple claws with an appealing dignity. There’s organization and purpose to be found even in Billy’s tendency to fold his empty crisps bag into what any American school kid would recognize immediately as a triangular “football.”
Billy and Susan text back and forth during the course of his workday, as he checks in on Molly. In the meantime, Susan puts together the puzzle pieces of the widening scope of the otter’s freewheeling adventures.
The human race as a whole may be a lost cause, but every once in a while, one of us exhibits a little grace. That’s certainly the case here with Billy, and God bless him for it. I don’t care what this man’s politics are, how he worships, or what goes on in his bedroom. As Susan observes, “I would rather have a man who cares than one who doesn’t.” What’s important is that Billy cares about the right things.
He’s so laconic, he would never say so, but his love for Molly is evident from the start. She awakens his paternal instincts, as he does the best he can in the roles of protector and teacher. Ultimately, however, the dynamic flips, and it is Molly who opens Billy’s eyes to the expansive beauty of the world around them – there’s a point where he recognizes a dead animal as another being, “just like us,” as opposed to simply gull food – and he learns the important lesson that the supposed barrier between man and nature is, in the end, a fiction.
The film makes a powerful conservationist argument while at no point lecturing about conservation. What words are there to equal the persuasive impact of the sublime drone aerial footage and underwater photography? The images, the narrative, the moving simplicity of this love story between man and animal, all speak for themselves.
“Billy & Molly: An Otter Love Story,” at 1 hour and 17 minutes, is a lesson in trust and the appreciation of simple things and how powerful and transformative they can be. Human and animal, we’re all in the same boat – in this case, quite literally! – and everything is so exquisitely beautiful and fragile.
I can’t even make it through the trailer now without getting choked up. If you want to feel hopeful about people, our place in the world, and what it means to be alive, watch this movie.
