MOVIE REVIEW: “Deep Water”
“Deep Water” (2006-Documentary)
Directed by: Jerry Rothwell, Lousie Osmond
Director of Photography: Nina Kellgren
Narrated by: Tilda Swinton
**** 1/2 out of a possible 4 Stars
This is the most amazing story ever to appear as a documentary movie. Nine men take up the challenge in 1967 of sailing in a yacht race, solo, without stopping, around the world.
To quote the Hollywood Reporter: “Deep Water is a stunning documentary that no only beautifully elucidates a nearly forgotten incident but touches on crucial themes involving isolation, sanity, self-worth, impossible dreams, the nature of heroism and limits of human endurance. The film asks the right questions and never settles for glib answers; indeed this incident defies answers because the enterprise—an attempt to circumnavigate the globe in a nonstop sailing race by an Englishman who was at best a weekend yachtsman—lacks all rationality.”
We all have vague notions of what it must be like to live in total isolation without human contact for weeks or months in maximum-security prisons.
In a somewhat parallel universe, these nine men put themselves in a similar situation, the difference being they are outside in isolation. Unlike maximum security, these nine men face all elements of exposure to life at sea with no crew. Their lives are in constant peril, decision have got to be correct. In a maximum-security prison, you are not forced to make life-altering decisions at all hours of the day and night and you are fed on a regular schedule.
Seeing this film brings to mind the Shackleton expedition to the South Pole in 1914 where his ship got stuck in the ice. Shackleton and his crew had to abandon their ship and while sitting on ice floes, watch it succumb to the pressure of the ice, crumpling before their eyes. This became a test of endurance of mythic proportions.
But the story of these somewhat anonymous sailors in “Deep Waters” tests the human brain in a somewhat different fashion. The key here is that being isolated at sea for ten months pushed some of these individuals to and beyond the edge of sanity.
The movie dwells on Donald Crowhurst and to a lesser extent Robin Knox-Johnston. What the movie doesn’t answer but instead leaves volumes of questions is the thinking and eventual fate of Bernard Montessori. IT is evident that he faced an extreme existential crisis. What priorities existed in his mind before the race around the world would eventually become irrelevant. Fame, glory, money, family, purpose, goals, would recede into nothingness. The power of the process would overcome all his goals, and all connection to his life as he had known it up to this point in his existence.
To follow the stories of these sailors becomes one of the great existential journeys known in History. The search for truth, for God, for meaning becomes ever more powerful. This story challenges comprehension on the deepest levels. Contemplating this voyage of latter day adventures is almost as profound as contemplating where the edge of the Universe is. If this movie fails to flatten you to the floor, you have no business being on this earth. Get yourself immediately reincarnated as a rock.
What I haven’t mentioned is how Rothwell and Osmond put this story together, using archival footage, audio recordings of the sailors themselves, interviews, and narrative & editing into an utterly brilliant film Nothing like this exists (except maybe “Touching the Void”). This is required viewing if you wish to continue on with your life as a human being.
