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''The Big Blue'' (released in some countries under the French title ''Le Grand Bleu'') is a 1988 English-language film in the French ''Cinéma du look'' visual style, made by French director Luc Besson. The film is a heavily fictionalized and dramatized story of the friendship and sporting rivalry between two leading contemporary champion free divers in the 20th century: Jacques Mayol (played by Jean-Marc Barr) and Enzo Maiorca (renamed to "Enzo Molinari" and played by Jean Reno), and Mayol's fictionalized relationship with his girlfriend Johana Baker (played by Rosanna Arquette). The film, which covers their childhood in 1960s Greece to their deaths in a 1980s Sicilian diving competition, is a cult-classic in the diving fraternity, and became one of France's most commercially successful films (although an adaptation for US release was a commercial failure in that country). President of France, Jacques Chirac, referred to the film in describing Mayol, after his death in 2001, as having been an enduring symbol for the "Big Blue" generation.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=BBC News - EUROPE - Diving legend commits suicide )〕 The story was heavily adapted for cinema — in real life Mayol lived from 1927 to 2001 and Maiorca retired from diving to politics in the 1980s. Both set no-limits category deep diving records below 100 metres, and Mayol was indeed involved in scientific research into human aquatic potential, but neither reached 400 feet (122 metres) as portrayed in the film, and they were not direct competitors. Mayol himself was a screenwriter for the film,〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=The Big Blue (1988) Full Cast & Crew )〕 and Mayol's search for love, family, "wholeness" and the meaning of life and death, and the conflict and tension between his yearning for the deep, and his relationship with his girlfriend, also form part of the backdrop for the latter part of the film. ==Plot== Two children, Jacques Mayol (Jean-Marc Barr) and Enzo Molinari (Jean Reno), have grown up on the Greek island of Amorgos in the 1960s. They challenge each other to collect a coin on the sea floor and Jacques loses. Later Jacques' father — who harvests shellfish from the seabed using a pump-supplied air hose and helmet — goes diving for shellfish. His breathing apparatus and rope gets caught and punctured by rocks on the reef and weighed down by water, he drowns. Jacques and Enzo can do nothing but watch in horror as he is killed. By the 1980s, both are well known freedivers, swimmers who can remain underwater for great times and at great depths. Enzo is on Sicily now, where he rescues a trapped diver from a shipwreck. He is a world champion freediver with a brash and strong personality, and now wishes to find Mayol and persuade him to return to no limits freediving in order to prove he is still the better of the two, in a friendly sports rivalry. Mayol himself works extensively with scientific research as a human research subject, and with dolphins, and is temporarily participating in research into human physiology in the iced-over lakes of the Peruvian Andes, where his remarkable and dolphin-like bodily responses to cold water immersion are being recorded. Insurance broker Johana Baker (Rosanna Arquette) visits the station for work purposes and is introduced to Jacques. She secretly falls in love with him. When she hears that Jacques will be at the World Diving Championships in Taormina, Sicily, she fabricates an insurance problem that requires her presence there, in order to meet him again. She and Jacques fall in love. However none of them realize the extent of Jaques' allurement with the depths. Jacques beats Enzo by 3 feet (1 meter) at this, their first competition and Enzo offers them a glass dolphin as a gift, and a tape measure to show the small difference between Jacques' and Enzo’s records. Johana goes back home to New York but is fired after her deception is discovered; she leaves New York and begins to live with Jacques. She hears the story that if one truly loves the deep sea, then a mermaid will appear at the depths of the sea, and will lead a diver to an enchanted place. At the next World Diving Championships, Enzo beats Jacques' record. The depths at which the divers are competing enter new territory and the dive doctor suggests they should cease competing, but the divers decide to continue. Jacques is asked to look at a local dolphinarium where a new dolphin has been placed, and where the dolphins are no longer performing; surmising that the new dolphin is homesick, the three of them break in at night to liberate the dolphin and transport her to the sea again. Back at the competition, other divers attempt to break Enzo’s new record but all fail. Jacques then attempts his next dive and reaches 400 ft (122m) breaking Enzo's world record. Angered by this, Enzo prepares to break Jacques' new world record. The doctor supervising the dive warns that the competitors must not go deeper - based upon Jacques' bodily reactions, at around 400 ft, conditions, and in particular the pressure, will become lethal and divers will be killed if they persist in attempting such depths. Enzo dismisses the advice and attempts the dive anyway, but is unable to make his way back to the surface. Jacques dives down to rescue him. Enzo, dying, tells Jacques that the doctor was right and also that it is better down there, and begs Jacques to help him back down to the depths, where he belongs. Jacques is grief-stricken and refuses, but after Enzo dies in his arms, finally honors his dying wish and takes Enzo's body back down to 400feet, leaving him to drift to the ocean floor. Jacques - himself suffering from cardiac arrest after the dive - is rescued and brought back to the surface by supervising scuba divers and requires his heart to be restarted with a defibrillator before being placed in medical quarters to recover. Jacques appears to be recovering from the diving accident, but later experiences a strange hallucinatory dream in which the ceiling collapses and the room fills with water, and he finds himself in the ocean depths surrounded by dolphins. Johana, who has just discovered she is pregnant, returns to check up on Jacques in the middle of the night, but finds him lying awake yet unresponsive in his bed with bloody ears and a bloody nose. Johana attempts to help him, but Jacques begins to get up and walk to the empty diving boat and gets suited up for one final dive. Desperately, Johana begs Jacques not to go, saying she is alive but whatever has happened at the depths is not, but he says he has to. She tells Jacques that she is pregnant, and sorrowfully begs him to stay, but finally understands he feels he must go. The two embrace and Johana breaks down crying. Jacques then places the release cord for the dive ballast in her hand, and - still sobbing - she pulls it, sending him down to the depths he loves. Jacques descends to around 400 ft and floats there for a brief moment staring into the darkness. A dolphin then appears and - dreamlike - Jacques lets go of his harness and swims away with it into the darkness. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Big Blue」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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