Adrift

Seen at the Sun Theatre in Yarraville, VIC

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.

***

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.

***

All is Lost

Seen at the Birks Cinema in Aberfeldy

Cecil says: This is an extraordinary film in so many ways: there's no dialogue at all; in fact there's a cast of one, which makes it impossible to have a dialogue; it's the first film I've ever seen where I began to feel sea sick half way through; and that is no doubt down to the amazing camera work, often underwater; and yet I was gripped all the way through, although overwhelmed almost from the start with a total sense of foreboding and fear.

I'm writing this without seeing the Oscar shortlists, but surely All is Lost has to be in there at least for its camera work, and maybe even for Robert Redford as best actor.

Robert Redford carries the part off amazingly. There he is, lone yachtsman, having a bit of a kip below deck as the film starts, and we hear the sound of what at first seems to be thunder, but then, as water laps around his feet and little kids' shoes bob around inside the boat, we realise - at the same time as Redford's character - that the boat has been holed and is slowly filling with water as it flows in the waves through the gap...a gap made by an enormous ship's contained which has clearly dropped off one of those mega freight ships.

What follows is an extraordinary sequence of human survival techniques. There's a narrative, too, as one by one, all Redford's protection mechanisms are peeled away like an onion skin, starting with the yacht's communications equipment, through the very boat itself slowly sinking, to Redford's own skin, breached in an effort to retrieve some precious item or other before all was lost.

Slowly, this hi-tech yacht, is pulled apart - though Redford has amazing knowledge of the sea and of boats, leading him to try things I would never have dreamt of doing - and then, once he has jumped ship to his inflatable life raft, we watch things continue to spiral slowly out of control, through storms, sharks, ships not spotting him and flares not working.

He writes a goodbye note to the world - the same note we heard him read out at the start of the film when the screen was totally black. And he puts the note in a glass bottle, ready to throw out to sea, so that somebody one day will know what happened to him.

He hesitates before throwing it out. And for that brief moment, it felt like the Robert Redford of 40 odd years ago before the final scene in Butch Cassidy, when he and Paul Newman know they are about to be killed and have to decide whether to jump over the fence and shoot back. Completely different scenario, but somehow there's a connection: Redford at a key moment at the start and end of his film career?

I won't do a plot spoiler because in a sense the plot, and the end of the narrative, does not matter to this film. It is all about atmosphere, human existence, survival, and how on earth we cope with losing step by step everything that protects us from the elements. And you can't get much more in touch with the elements than being ditched from an inflatable into the middle of the Indian Ocean...

***.5

Bea missed out on this one, having to spend the day at work. But in a sense, it's appropriate to watch this film alone!