Vampires, Assassins, and Romantic Angst by the Seaside: Takoma Reviews

Women love bad boys.

__________________
San Franciscan lesbian dwarves and their tomato orgies.

I suppose it depends on how you are defining sentimentalizing. It's certainly a story told based in emotion. And as I addressed in my review, there are certain places where it makes changes to the real story to make it more positive and palatable.

But where I think it avoids the sentimentality that I worried about going in is that a huge amount of the film feels very specific and personal to the characters (like the forewoman being executed in the street). Sometimes things break well for people, other times they don't. There's no particular rhyme or reason to it, and certainly no sense that the best or nicest or whatever people survive.

On the Godard thing . . . I sort of agree. I think that the scope of the Holocaust is so vast that the idea of containing it or defining it in any piece of art is very daunting. I guess I don't think of anything I see about the Holocaust as being about the Holocaust as a whole. They can only be little glimpses or moments from something too large to capture. I'm really glad that I'd seen Night and Fog before Schindler's List. The only thin that worries me about the idea that you can't capture the Holocaust in film is the implication that people should not try to portray it. Art is one way that history and the specific stories of people in history stays alive. All films about the Holocaust might in many ways be insufficient, but they are still better than nothing. (Okay, maybe some of them aren't better than nothing, but I don't think I want a world where Night and Fog doesn't exist).

Have you seen Schindler's List? If so, what was your takeaway?

I think Kubrick also criticized Schindler under the notion that the Holocaust is about human failure and that Schindler's List is about success. Which is true. But I also think that is more of a bumper sticker comment than an actual serious criticism.


The reality is, even if any one film, or even film as a whole, can never completely comprehend something like the Holocaust, it still must grapple with it. It's irrelevant how far from the mark it falls. Because of course it will. That is the failure we have to embrace, for better or worse. That we will never be able to reconcile it through art, even though we have to try.

I mean . . . sort of?

I don't think that I'd ever think of Schindler's List as being about success. The proportion of the film that is NOT about people being saved is pretty large.

I also think that something like the Holocaust completely warps what the word "success" means. In the context of the film, is the doctor and nurse overdosing their patients so that the Nazis can't murder them in their beds success? Is three people out of a family of ten surviving a success?

The failure of humanity hangs over almost every moment of the film. And I think that the message the movie goes back to---the person who saves one life saves the world entire--is an important one. Even if something is so terrible that it could never be seen as anything but catastrophe, it is still worth doing your part, however small that might be. That drop of humanity does make a different for the people who were saved. And it's incredibly clear in the film that they are an exception.

Agreed.

I think the point Kubrick is making is that this particular films focus is more about the people who have been saved, and how this one man saved those people. So the focus is a success. And in that very narrow context he is correct.


Yes, there is the profound failure that surrounds this 'success', but the film tries to redirect our attention towards the ones who will not die. And even though we all know this is a small drop in the bucket, we leave the movie thinking 'thank God some people did something'.



Hooray?



I agree that it's a dumb polarity to get hung up on because it's definitely ridiculous to watch Schindlers List and think anyone is coming away with anything but "holy ****, that was awful". It's obviously not really a movie about human success because you can't shake the reality of what happened.



But I get his point. Even if I think getting hung up on these technicalities about what it's 'about' is ultimately a distraction.


Which is why I think his complaint sounds more relevant in an abstract way. It falls apart when we remember the despair and emotional impact that most of the film has, regardless of whatever successes Schindler accomplishes.


No one is forgetting what happened in the Holocaust.



Unless Roberto Benigni is directing it.

I suppose. I didn't leave the movie thinking "Thank god Schindler did what he did." If anything, the modest scale of his success calls into stark relief just how many people did not win the proverbial lottery ticket of ending up on that list. In this regard, I would compare it to something like Titanic where I did feel like the "success" related to the protagonists did outshadow the larger tragedy.

But I see what you're saying and Kubrick's point. For example, it seems off to me that this movie is on the AFI 100 Years, 100 Cheers list. Like, who was cheering? There were just some moments of respite in between all the stuff that made me cry.

That illustrates the criticism perfectly.


If you are cheering by the end of Schindler's List, have you watched it?


But it seems this is how some people react to it.


Yippee! They didn't all die!

Dune, 1984

In this sci-fi/fantasy epic, an intergalactic conflict leads to a young heir named Paul (Kyle MacLachlan) and his powerful mother, Lady Jessica (Francesca Annis) trying to survive the evil machinations of the wicked Baron Harkonnen (Kenneth McMillan). At stake is control of a much-coveted material called Spice, produced only on a planet dominated by giant sandworms.

Full of visual interest, an overstuffed story and underdeveloped characters hamper the enjoyment to be had.

It’s hard to write a review of a film when one’s feelings are so conflicted. Like, in my mind I don’t have a tone for how I felt about this movie. What I do know is that there was a fundamental disconnect between the visual imagination on display and the underwhelming character arcs.

On the positive side, I really loved a lot of the visual elements. There are simple touches, such as people who have been on the planet for long enough having eyes that have turned blue. There are also larger pieces, like the sandworms and the overall landscape of the planet. And though it sometimes had a corny vibe to it, I did enjoy the touch of the Baron being able to levitate above the ground, something that adds a cartoonish element to his despicable character that I didn’t mind. I liked the way that a power, The Voice, was shown, as a slow-motion echo of the words spoken by the person. It’s a simple but effective effect.

There are also a lot of actors here who I enjoy, so that even if their characters were not well-developed, it was fun to see them in their roles. Patrick Stewart, Virginia Madsen, Max von Sydow, etc. I’m also a big fan of Kyle MacLachlan and the mellow energy that he has, so I didn’t mind having him as the centerpiece of the film.

I think that part of my struggle with a film like this is that I have a total lack of familiarity with the source material. I don’t know what has been added, changed, or omitted, and I don’t have the ability to fill in the gaps or interpret the significance of any differences between the novel and the film.

So that said . . . huh. Is the original text this superficial when it comes to the story and the character development? A prime example of this, though there are many, is the story of Paul eventually falling in love. This is conveyed entirely with superimposed shots of Paul and his lover kissing. Then later we see them kissing some more. The characters are drawn in the thinnest of terms, which means that various deaths, betrayals, alliances, etc just don’t hit. Oh, so-and-so is the traitor . . . alright, I guess.

I also simply did not understand some contradictions in the world-building. There are these constant references to women being the more powerful ones. Many of the women in the film belong to a line of some sort of sisterhood that includes having intense physical and psychic abilities. As Paul goes through tests of his abilities, the mother superior remarks that he’s endured much more than any woman ever has. And yet, the universe of the film has so many patriarchal tropes. Despite their supposed power, the women are content to be concubines, not rulers proper. Late in the film, a powerful female character emerges, and her main job seems to be telling everyone how great Paul is. There are frequent threats of sexual assault against the female characters, and always just as a way to goad Paul to action, never in the sense of considering the impact on the woman being threatened. It’s also drowning in hetero-normativity, right down to the toxic trope that the bad guy is queer-coded (and in an incestuous context, as he drools over the sight of his barely-clothed nephew). Maybe someone more familiar with the source material can help me here, because it all felt incredibly lazy.

I can say that I was always entertained, but I can also say that I was a bit underwhelmed.

I think, and this doesn't excuse the criticism, that some people as a defense mechanism will narrow their lens to the positive. It's definitely not how I experienced the film---I frankly remember very little of the Schindler stuff and a lot of the little vignettes that surrounded it---but I guess I understand it.

To Spielberg's credit, I felt like he kept the balance pretty well through the film. It wasn't just "Let's show all the bad stuff in the first hour so people get that it was bad, then we can get to the happy part!". Pain and death and cruelty and unfairness were woven through the whole thing. Even the way that Goeth's storyline ends resists any kind of fist-pump "hell yeah!" moment. It's merely too little and too late.

I do think that there is space in our thinking and examination of the Holocaust to recognize and be grateful for stories of survival and the people who played critical roles in that survival.

Have you seen the film I Have Never Forgotten You? It's a documentary about a man who survived the Holocaust (and I mean, barely survived) and went on to obsessively try and hunt down war criminals. Rather than, "Yay! He found the Nazis!", for me it was a really emotional look at someone trying to process their trauma and reaching for whatever the closest thing to justice is.

I don't want to, but I hate Dune.

LOL. I was shocked by its low Letterboxd score!

On the Town, 1949

Three sailors in the US Navy come ashore for a memorable-but-brief shore leave in New York City. Gabey (Gene Kelly) soon becomes fixated on meeting and wooing “Miss Turnstile” Ivy Smith (Vera-Ellen); Chip (Frank Sinatra) just wants to see everything in his grandfather’s guidebook, but is fanatically pursued by cab driver Hildy (Betty Garrett); and the sweet Ozzie (Jules Munshin) finds romance with Claire (Ann Miller), a researcher who loves his resemblance to a caveman.

Despite a few questionable elements, strong dance pieces and fun performances make this musical a lot of fun.

There’s something immediately appealing about the framing device of this film. The three protagonists get 24 hours off of the boat, and then they’re headed back. This isn’t about finding their soulmate or future spouse---this is about having a good time and maybe making a meaningful connection. The stakes are different than a typical romantic comedy, and it also has the element of a ticking clock running against the men. Every minute that Gabey spends hunting for Ivy is a minute out of his very short leave time.

The main characters are all pretty appealing---with, for me, one glaring exception---and it’s easy to root for them. The three sailors are just sex-starved enough to be believable without them just being walking horndogs. I also found Chip’s sightseeing quest to be really endearing. Of course the stereotype is that the men would just be looking for a quick hookup, and the idea that Chip wants to see the city and also feel a connection to his grandfather is really sweet. Obviously Gene Kelly is a tremendously talented dancer, but he’s well-matched by Vera-Ellen who is not only talented in her dancing, but also manages to inject a grace and humor into her performances that are very captivating. A sequence where Ivy lives out an impossible Swiss-Army-woman fantasy sequence---she’s a housewife! And an athlete! And a scholar!---is a definite highlight. I also liked that one of the three sailors, Ozzie, has a distinct “non-American” accent. It’s not made a big deal out of, but I like that it shows the diversity of people who serve in the military.

The supporting performances are just as good, with a memorable turn from many actors. Florence Bates is very funny as Ivy’s lush of a dance teacher, Madame Dilyovska. But the star of the supporting cast is hands-down Alice Pearce as Hildy’s roommate, Lucy Shmeeler. Afflicted with a perpetual cold and a comically pinched voice, Pearce is incredibly endearing. Lucy agrees to go out with Gabey when he can’t find Ivy. The handling of this subplot was done with a surprising kindness, in my opinion. While Lucy is obviously not in Ivy’s league---she is frumpy, nerdy, an introvert, etc---Gabey treats her with respect, and she takes joyful part in one of the song and dance sequences. Yes, the joke is that she’s a bit of a dud as a date, but she’s her own person and she’s not treated as some sort of monster or object of pity. She also has some very funny exchanges with Kelly (when they consider getting a drink together, she deadpans “Have you seen The Lost Weekend?”). I would watch an entire On the Town spinoff about Lucy Shmeeler.

Despite some overall good vibes, there were a few things that knocked this one down a few pegs for me. There’s a dance number that involved a bunch of dated---very dated!--portrayals of other cultures. And weirdly, they talk about really ancient times and then act out not-ancient Indigenous rituals. Cringe. Not surprising, but cringe.

I also really didn’t care for the character of Hildy and her treatment of Chip. Miller has really sharp comic timing and pretty good chemistry with Sinatra. But I found her treatment of his character very off-putting. The guy just wants to see some sights. Let the man just see his sights. Instead Hildy browbeats him into coming back to her apartment. She physically chases him as he tells her no. Whenever he talks about what he wants to do with his weekend, she sighs and whines and makes a big production of how he doesn’t care about her, as if they’re a long married couple and not two people who just met 45 minutes earlier. It’s weird, abusive-like behavior. Their whole subplot felt very sour to me. Chip’s enthusiasm about the city is a nice departure from the horny-sailor trope, and I had a really negative response to Hildy basically demeaning him every time he talks about it.

Good dance numbers and a mostly endearing cast of characters make this a fun viewing.

I liked it a lot and it was my favorite Spielberg film.

This was many years ago, though, so I have no idea how I'd respond to it today.

Thanks for the reply!

Yeah, seriously; I mean, according to this, the full quote is: "Frederic Raphael, who co-authored the screenplay for Eyes Wide Shut, recalls Kubrick questioning whether a film truly can represent the Holocaust in its entirety. After Raphael suggested Schindler’s List, Kubrick replied, “Think that’s about the Holocaust? That was about success, wasn’t it? The Holocaust is about 6 million people who get killed; Schindler’s List is about 600 who don’t", which is just ridiculous to me, and makes me seriously question as to whether Kubrick actually watched the movie himself. I mean, besides the fact that the Schindlerjuden numbered 1,200, not 600 (but hey, why bother being accurate when you're being flippant?), I mentioned in my review (and will repeat) that it baffles me how somehow could possibly watch List and come away not aware that the vast majority of Jewish people in Europe weren't as fortunate to survive as the people Schindler saved, especially with the end of scenes like this in it:



It's like, Kubs, I love your movies man, but you were way off base with that comment.

Actually, this context really helps me make sense of his remark. I agree that I don't think one film can represent the Holocaust in its entirety.

Like I said before, I think that there has to be an awareness that this event and its impact were so large that all you can really get from a movie is a sense of a piece of it, not the whole thing.

For example, an inherent limitation to Schindler's List is that (and maybe I'm not remembering, so correct me if I'm wrong) it doesn't show the treatment of Romani people, or the treatment if some of the other "asocial" groups who were persecuted. The most conservative estimate for the number of Romani killed is 150,000, but other estimates are much much higher.

Now, cinema must naturally exclude when portraying any event. I'm not saying that the lack of Romani (or gay, or Jehovah's Witness, or mentally disabled, or homeless, or sex worker characters) is a flaw of the film. But it is dangerous to name one film as "truly representing" something like the Holocaust, "in its entirety."

And in this context I also think that his point about a focus on a "happy" story is more valid. A story about a Nazi Party member having a change of heart and saving a large group of Jewish people is (1) an amazing story but (2) not what should be the cinematic representative of what happened in the Holocaust.

Dune (the Lynch version) is mostly a pretty bad movie with a few too-brief moments of Lynchian imagination. Lynch has pretty much disowned it, last I read. But! It did result in this funny anecdote from Patrick Stewart about meeting Sting on the set:


(I feel like I've shared this before but it's worth re-sharing if so.)

The Big Heat, 1953

One night, a police officer uses his service weapon to take his own life. Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford) is called in to investigate the death, and soon discovers that it’s somehow connected to gangster Mike Lagana (Alexander Scourby) and one of his lieutenants, Vince Stone (Lee Marvin). But the more Bannion investigates, the more danger he finds himself in. With the unlikely help of Stone’s girlfriend, Debby (Gloria Grahame), Bannion relentlessly chases down the truth.

Gritty and brutal, this crime thriller keeps you on the edge of your seat courtesy of memorable characters and shocking plot turns.

Let’s talk about Gloria Grahame in this film, because she is a revelation and the most interesting thing happening (in a very interesting story!) by a long mile. We first meet Debby when she answers a late-night call from Lagana. Asked to get Stone on the phone she replies that she’s happy to go and fetch him, “I like seeing him jump.” Debby strongly cultivates a little girl persona, which keeps her in the relatively good graces of Lagana’s crew, but doesn’t protect her from the violence she receives at Stone’s hands. Still, she seems swayed by the lavish lifestyle that being with him affords and, if you read between the lines even a little, she probably knows how dangerous it would be to leave Vince.

But as the film goes on, we see Debby become restless. It may be because a woman is tortured to death by Vince, something that makes the endgame of their relationship more stark. Or it might be because her contempt for Vince--who is violent and cruel, but also a total puppet to Lagana’s needs---gets harder and harder to hide. It might also be a crisis brought about by seeing the raw anger and grief from Bannion as the human cost of his investigation rises and gets more personal. When something finally does happen that convinces Debby to turn against Vince, it’s the most brutal and shocking moment of the entire film. And yet, to the film’s credit, Debby is given a degree of autonomy and power afterward, and Grahame’s performance kicks into a whole other gear.

And while obviously Grahame’s performance was my favorite, the rest of the cast is just as good. Ford begins as someone who is merely stubborn and determined, but as the film goes on his emotional connection to the case begins to erode his own sense of decorum. There’s a line where his determination to bring Stone and Lagana to justice becomes a sort of frenzy. And for a man who begins as very straight-forward and buttoned down, it’s quite the transformation. Marvin also makes a strong impression as the vile Vince Stone. He’s a yes-man with a sadistic streak, protected from the censure of his friends through his wild and unpredictable violence. In a standout sequence, Vince doesn’t like the way that a woman is rolling some dice, and so he burns her with a cigarette. As she screams and cries in pain, not a single person in the bar does anything about it.

The world in this movie is a bleak one, where people--including many of Bannion’s superiors---merely accept their place as abetters to evil deeds either out of fear or the enjoyment of the spoils of crime, or some mix of the two. Bannion repeatedly comes up against others who will not help him in his pursuit of justice. And while his frustration practically radiates off of the screen, we can understand that it would not be so easy to speak up when people who are seen as liabilities are being tortured or murdered without hesitation. The victims of this violence are often people who are not powerful: an over-the-hill woman searching for love in bars, a working class man dealing in explosives. It’s power helping power, and Bannion---who has long been someone with power due to his position---doesn’t know what to do when he comes up against it.

I did have some conflicting feelings about how the women characters were treated in this movie, both in terms of the on-screen violence perpetrated against them and how they function in the plot. On one hand, there are three women characters with their own personalities and very different characters. While the character of Bannion’s wife, Katie (Jocelyn Brando) is probably the least developed, we do get some fun hints about their relationship in specific details like how she always steals a little pour of his beer for herself. As I wrote about expansively above, I loved the character of Debby and her plot arc. But there’s also the frequent use of violence against the women in a way that feels borderline exploitative. And in a slightly different category, I thought that one of the women was used to shield Bannion from crossing a line that might have made his character less popular with the viewing audience. I honestly felt like it was a bit of a cop-out--a way of giving the audience the blood they’re baying for without implicating the honorable male protagonist.

On the whole, this is a captivating thriller with memorable turns from its cast and a wonderfully winding plot.

Skinamarink, 2022

One night, siblings Kevin (Lucas Paul) and Kaylee (Dali Rose Tetreault) awaken to find that their mother and father have disappeared. Unable to make sense of this development, the two hunker down in the den/basement. But as time wears on, the windows and doors begin to disappear, along with other objects in the house. Strange voices call to the children, and it’s unclear what the strange being or beings want with them.

Meticulous in its pacing and building of suspense, this is perhaps the best portrayal of child-like nightmare logic that I’ve ever seen.

Recently I was checking my voicemail messages, and the program decided to play me my old messages starting with the oldest one. For nostalgia's sake I was like, sure, let’s listen to some of these. Then I listened to a message that I’d forgotten about, but it made my heart totally sink. It’s a message I got on my phone about 15 years ago. It begins with silence and breathing. Then a child’s voice--a boy who sounds like he’s maybe 8 or 9 years old--says, “Mom? Mom, where did you go? I woke up and you’re not here. Can you . . . can you call? Call and then say something on the machine.” I remember at the time not knowing what to do. The message had been on my phone for two days before I got it. Should I call the number? Would I get the kid in trouble if I did? In the end, I didn’t call the number, but I’ve always wondered how things turned out for that little boy, and why his mother had “disappeared” while he was asleep.

I thought of that little boy from my voicemail while watching Skinamarink: the tentative alarm, the confusion. The brother and sister going through rituals of self-soothing, cycling back to alarm, then retreating back to try and find something like normalcy.

All through the film, the television in the basement blares an unnatural light. It’s at once something like a halo of safety and also menacingly unnatural. The cartoons on the television, playing on a VHS tape that the kids get out, are jaunty but also at times shrill. For me, it strongly evoked times where I was sick as a kid. The cartoons started out as a treat, but after hours of being in bed, feverish, there was a special kind of headache that they caused.

The whole movie is shot with angles that seem to be mainly from the point of view of the children. It’s a style that captures the strange details---how stairs look when you sit at the top of them, the pattern on the wood at the top of a cabinet--that you notice especially when you’re in someone else’s house. It all feels like some strange intersection between a memory and a dream. It’s the way your house looks when you dream about it: not exactly like your house, and yet you know that it’s meant to be your house.

Wisely, the children are mostly kept off screen. Their frightened breathing and hesitations in moving room to room tell us everything we need to know about how they feel. In some scenes, they seem almost calm in the face of very strange things, but it’s the calm of a kind of disorientation. Just how is a child meant to react to a doll standing on the ceiling? What are you supposed to say when a window just simply isn’t there anymore? With no other choice, the children simply carry on with a degree of pragmatism.

There are a lot of possible explanations for what is happening in the film, and I can think of half a dozen plausible ones. I was intrigued by a line of dialogue we hear from the mother early in the film: an incomplete sentence that begins, “Your father and I . . . “. One thought I had was that the things we see in the film are connected to a separation or divorce between the parents. There’s always the chance that this is simply a nightmare. A darker thought I had was that the house may have become some sort of a purgatory for the siblings---or maybe just for one of them---following either an accidental death or a death at the hands of one of their parents. One of the things I liked the most about the film is that I could see the validity of several theories, and yet I didn’t feel any kind of need for a final answer. Ambiguity in a film like this can be frustrating. I’m sure there are people who feel that the ambiguous nature of much of the movie was just an excuse to put weird stuff on screen. But I think that what we see is far too intentional, and escalates in far too much of a deliberate way for that criticism to hold any weight.

I think that this is a pretty great movie. The fact that it was made for just $15,000 is incredible. There’s an emotional intelligence to this film and it captures a child’s perspective so very well. If I had one minor complaint, it would be that the last 5 minutes had a very “It’s over . . . no, it’s not over. Now it’s over . . . no, just kidding, it’s still going” thing happening.

Really creative and different.

I should get to Skinamarink soon.

__________________
IMDb
Letterboxd

The Deepest Breath, 2023

In this documentary, we learn about the lives of Alessia Zecchini and Stephen Keenan, two people whose lives intertwine around the sport of free diving. Alessia is determined to set records and make her mark on the world of free-diving, an extreme sport in which swimmers use a single breath to descend as deep as possible and then return to the surface. Stephen, after a close call of his own doing a free dive, becomes a safety officer and expert. Together the two of them experience the thrills and dangers of the sport they love.

This is a thrilling and emotional look at two people forming a powerful bond while living on the edge.

A standout moment of media-induced mild trauma involves me and my sister watching some show or movie on TV as kids. A woman attempts a free dive, but she goes too deep. When they finally get her to the surface, her ears are bleeding. So I already came into this movie with some fearful notions about free diving.

Ya’ll.

It is so much worse than I thought. The free divers are constantly pushing the edge of their capacity. The timing of the dives means that the part that requires the most exertion---fighting gravity and water pressure to resurface--comes as the divers are running out of the air from their single breath. It is a frequent (very frequent!) occurrence that within about 10 meters of the surface, the divers choke and their brains shut down their bodies as a survival mechanism. They are pulled to the top by safety divers, who must then revive them with mouth-to-mouth and the quick application of oxygen. It’s horrifying to watch, and we see divers experience it over and over and over, sometimes literally days in a row. (Competitions run for several days, and divers get 6 attempts in those days to get their best depth).

The film does a great job of sketching out the personalities of both Alessia and Stephen. Alessia is incredibly driven. She works incredibly hard, and holds herself to almost impossible standards. Obviously that mentality could potentially be dangerous in any field, but even “casual” free diving can be incredibly dangerous. Stephen is a wild spirit---someone who spends years traveling the world before discovering a passion for being a safety officer. When he saves the life of a diver named Alexey, he makes a name for himself in the field and is able to eventually own and operate his own safety company. The affection and respect that they have for one another is very apparent in all of the footage of them in both personal and professional settings.

There are countless people interviewed in this film, but the two that give the film the most emotional power are Alessia’s father, Enzo, and Stephen’s father, Peter. Neither Alessia nor Stephen appear in interviews in the film, lending an impending sense of doom. With every close call that’s portrayed, we experience it through the fathers. By this structure of the film, we feel the pain of the fathers, if in a small degree. As we watch, we can’t help but think, “Is this the one? Is this the time it all goes wrong?”. And while there is relief when the answer is no, that relief is short lived, because it’s always onto the next risky thing. Both of these men have had to support their children through careers that are very dangerous. I can’t imagine what it would be like to watch your child in footage disappear into the depths, knowing that they might not resurface.

Despite never ever (ever, ever, ever) wanting to do anything like this, the film does a really lovely job of explaining what draws people to it. Alessia describes a moment in the descent where the weight of the water above the diver actually begins to push them down, creating basically an underwater freefall. It’s kind of beautiful, even as it’s terrifying. There’s also a simplicity to it that is appealing. You dive down, deepest dive wins. The only degree of subjectivity comes when the divers surface. A group of judges must decide if they are still in control. So even if you surface under your own power, you must be in a distinctly conscious state. But aside from that, there’s a purity to it that can’t be denied.

There is something really fascinating about the culture built around the sport. The people in it seem surprisingly easy-going, and that especially includes the woman who is the respiratory specialist. She has the energy of an elementary school teacher, and her job is checking to see if divers are permanently damaging their lungs. One of the women interviewed explains that her boyfriend drowned in one of the dives attempted by Alessia. Almost everyone in the film has been present for the death of a fellow diver or for a very close call.

I found this to be a very powerful documentary. It raises questions about how far one might push themselves to achieve their ambitions and to find happiness. I would never make some of the choices made by the people in the film, but I understood their motivations.

Definitely not for anyone who is already afraid of the abyss of the deep ocean.