Cecil says: The opening scene of Adrift is so like Robert Redford’s All is Lost that you could be mistaken for thinking they nicked the idea. In fact, the whole concept of Adrift is pretty similar to the Redford survival film – boat gets holed out in the middle of the ocean; how the hell do you get out of that alive?
The Redford film is really only about survival, though; it
really only has RR in it from scene 1 to the end; you feel the loneliness and
marvel at his creative skills in managing to get him and his wrecked boat to
safety.
Adrift is as much to do with the relationship between the
two main protagonists: the couple who agree to sail the boat across the Pacific
from Tahiti to San Diego. And the focus is really on the young woman who has to
manage the situation once the boat has been damaged in a storm.
Well in the amazingly beautiful Sun Theatre in Yarraville,
the audience was certainly largely female (maybe also to do with the matinee
timing), and there was a whole row of young women in front of us who were perhaps
the target audience for the makers of Adrift. I wonder how they empathised and
identified with the young American (Tammy) who is trying to get the boat to a
safe place and not die in the process.
The film is set in 1983 and we discover at the end that it
is based on a true story (not sure why they held that back to the final
credits, and I don’t think it’s much of a spoiler for anyone who hasn’t yet
seen the film). That got me realising that I had two memories of Tahiti myself:
in 1968, so only 15 years before this film was set, my boat back from Australia
docked outside Tahiti, and funnily enough we then went into the most terrifying
tropical storm I can ever remember being in. The ship was pitched and rolled
for hours and that was a big liner, so how a small yacht survived at all, I
don’t know.
Then I flew in 1986 from Sydney to LA with a stop-off in
Tahiti, and I can remember a guy next to me on the plane had plans to stop off
and get work as crew on a boat, so that kind of thing did happen.
As a survival film, I preferred Redford’s. But as an
observation on relationships, dreams, hallucinations even, as well as survival,
Adrift was a good watch.
And wow the Sun Theatre is amazing.
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Bea says: I really enjoyed this outing to the historic Sun theatre in Yarraville. I found the film compelling, in that "what would I have done in her situation" kind of way that survival films have (I did not see the similar Robert Redford film with Cecil). I very, very vaguely remembered the true story this film is based on from the early eighties (my memory was triggered by the footage of magazine and weekend supplement features at the end), but because my memory was vague the twist in the plot came as a complete surprise to me.
I did very much enjoy watching a film solely about a woman, with her experiences being completely central to the plot. We so rarely see this. And she was portrayed as strong and capable - I hoped the row of young millennial women in front of us would have found her inspiring - I did, and I was glad to read that she still sails regularly, in the closing summary of "what happened after". The film is quite sad, and not entirely uplifting, but very absorbing and I would recommend it.
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