Much of movie-going is based on the suspension of disbelief. Audiences are savvy enough to know that superheroes and giant alien robots don’t really exist, so they easily set aside reality when the lights dim and the Dolby-enhanced soundtrack kicks in.
That ingrained behavior can create a subconscious dilemna when watching a documentary film. When a documentary filmmaker asks an audience to believe what it’s seeing, it almost goes against the very nature of cinema. That makes the filmmaker’s job much harder: He or she has to function as a storyteller and an investigative journalist; not just telling a story but proving it with incontrovertable research. The more incredible the story, the larger the burden of proof. But when a documentary filmmaker can meet that standard, the experience is incomparable.
Deep Water is a top-notch retelling of a 1968 competition, sponsored by London’s Sunday Times to sail solo around the world non-stop. At the time, nobody knew if a boat could make it, or if the human mind could stand the months of solitude it would require. An Englishman had just circumnavigated the globe alone – albeit with stops for repairs, and his triumph was the talk of the country. The sailor who could up that ante, and circumnavigate the globe in one shot, would become a national hero.
Eight rugged, hero-adventurer types signed on and one by one headed out to sea. The ninth and last man in the field was Donald Crowhurst, a congenial, nautically undistinguished English everyman. Owner of a failing marine electronics company, he was convinced his technology would give him an unbeatable advantage over the other sailors. He mortgaged almost everything his family of six owned on a gamble that he could finish. Failure would ruin his family.
There were two prizes – one for the first around, and one for the fastest time – but to qualify the sailors had to sail by October 31st. The front-runners had departed months before the deadline. Crowhurst set sail with just hours to spare, and immediately fell behind. It was almost apparent that he had no chance of circumnavigating the globe. In fact, his boat won’t even make a respectable start to the race.
To describe what happens next would spoil the belief-defying spell of Deep Water. Suffice it to say, when trapped between a rock and a hard place, the resourceful Crowhurst opts for neither. The filmmakers, Louise Ormond and Jerry Rothwell, weave plentiful archive footage together with some harrowing ocean cinematography and chilling sound design to soar over that theshold of skepticism into the awe-inspiring realm of amazement.
Their secret weapon is footage shot by the sailors themselves of their actual journey. Many of them had 16mm cameras on-board, given to them by the BBC for press coverage purposes. It’s a rare and revealing look. Crowhurst, born into moderate privilige in India then thrust into poverty back in England, has the jumpiness of a man never quite in his element. Poised and properly chin-up English for the TV cameras, he set sail wearing a sweater and a tie. Deep Water is able to take that footage and look deeper, veering from the comic to the absurd to the tragic. There are many moments the audience gets to look him in the eye, and we can almost see him peeling away, trying to escape, perpetually going from the frying pan to the fire to a bigger fire.
Mainstream documentaries like this have been few and far between lately. Despite some redundancies and a slightly stretched out running time, Deep Water is a rare pleasure in cinema – slick, engrossing, and harrowing experience that is absolutely true.
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