The Deep

Dir: Baltasar Kormákur

2012

*****

2012's The Deep tells the amazing true story of Guðlaugur Friðþórsson and his miraculous survival against all odds. On the 11th March 1984, Friðþórsson and his fellow crew went out in their fishing boat off the coast of Iceland's Westman Island. Only Friðþórsson made it back. Due to miscalculations on the size of the attached trenchers, the boat capsized, trowing half of the crew in the water and trapping the other half in the hull. Friðþórsson tried to help his fellow crewmen but to no avail, they all died quickly of hypothermia in the ice cold sea. Friðþórsson somehow swam all the way to the island, was crashed against the rocks and when he did finally get onto land, he had to walk for miles over rough lava rocks to get to the nearest dwelling. Baltasar Kormákur's drama tells it how it happened from Friðþórsson's testimonies but doesn't leave the story there. We then find out what happened to him after the event, how he was thought of in his small village, what the media made of him and about the various science experiments performed on him. The film focuses on one man's survival from a scientific point of view and from a mental angle. His body survived due to reasons that are still unclear but how does a person live a normal life after such a tragic event with a media frenzy that followed? How do you live with being labeled a hero when you didn't actually save anyone but yourself? Needless to say, Friðþórsson is as remarkable as his story is. Kormákur's direction is awesome, from the beautifully lit action of a sinking ship, to the pseudo-documentary footage of Friðþórsson's flashbacks of childhood and escaping the Island as a child during the 1973 eruption of Eldfell, the Island's active Volcano. Real documentary footage featured on TV news is cleverly reconstructed and aspects of Friðþórsson's turn of events brought to life exceptionally. It's a complex story treated with a simple elegance. One of the best of 2012.