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.
No comments:
Post a Comment