Willem Dafoe wears a Vostok Amphibia

In the cramped blue corridor of the Belafonte, Klaus Daimler squares up to Ned Plimpton, and you can read each man from the wrist down. Willem Dafoe plays Klaus, the German first mate, loyal to Steve Zissou to the point of jealousy and dressed in the same pale-blue uniform and red watch cap as the rest of the crew. On his left wrist, sitting next to a sheathed knife on his belt, is a round steel dive watch with a dark blue dial. It is a working sailor's watch, worn where a working sailor would wear it.

The watch is a Vostok Amphibia, or near enough that the silhouette gives it away, the cheap Soviet diver that Wes Anderson strapped onto most of Team Zissou. The joke runs underneath the whole film. The crew sails on no money and a leaking budget, so they wear watches that cost almost nothing, while Ned, the moneyed outsider who may or may not be Zissou's son, turns up wearing a Rolex GMT-Master. Two halves of the same family, told apart by what is on the wrist.

Vostok has built the Amphibia at its Chistopol factory since 1967, and it remains one of the strangest bargains in watchmaking. The case is the clever part. Instead of fighting water pressure, the Amphibia uses it. A compression caseback and a thick acrylic crystal let the sea press harder against the gaskets the deeper you go, so the seal tightens under exactly the conditions that would flood a lesser watch. They sold for pocket change in the Soviet years and still go for under a hundred pounds today.