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Styx – The Ethics of Life and Death

December 26, 2018 by Darrel Manson Leave a Comment

If you see someone in need, should you help? That may seem like a simple question, but it is one that we must deal with in many ways almost every day. Often we help. Often we have reasons not to help. Wolfgang Fischer’s film Styx is a moving story of a woman who must make choice after choice that could result in life or death for many people. The film won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the Berlin Film Festival.

Rike (Susanne Wolff), a young emergency doctor, sets off on a vacation of sailing her 11-meter yacht, Asa Gray, to Ascension Island, about half way between Africa and South America. About the first half of the film focuses on the common aspects of the trip: provisioning, setting off, contacting nearby freighters. Then, a storm comes up. Alone on the boat, she must work through the storm to stay afloat. But in the calm after the storm, everything changes.

She awakes to find a derelict trawler a few hundred yards away. It is full of refugees seeking to go to Europe. It is taking on water and could sink. They call to her to rescue them, but there are more than her boat can hold. She radios for help. The Coast Guard responds that they’ll send help and advise her to keep her distance. But after several hours no help comes. Soon some of the refugees begin swimming toward her, many fail and drown, but one, a boy about 12 (Gedion Odour Wekesa) barely makes it, and she hauls him aboard, totally exhausted and begins caring for him. More radio messages to authorities, more promises, but still no help. What is she to do?

The title comes from the river that in Greek mythology led from Earth to the Underworld. It was a river that sat between life and death. Those on the trawler were essentially on Charon’s boat on the way to Hades. But in this case they were not without hope, even though the hope fails to materialize.

The name of Rike’s yacht is also interesting. Asa Gray was a 19th Century botanist and friend of Charles Darwin who strove to demonstrate that evolution was not in conflict with religion. There are times within the film that we get the impression that for many of those who are not responding the loss of these lives is just a form of survival of the fittest. Although religion is not overtly included in the story, the morality that is a part of religion does make this very much a story that fits within Asa Gray’s beliefs.

This is a parable of moral obligations. Rike’s legal obligation was fulfilled when she radioed for help. She could have set on her way again. Instead she stayed. When the boy arrived, she gave him extensive medical aid. She sought others to help at various times. She was not satisfied with doing the bare minimum of care for those in need. She put herself at risk in the process.

The film is also a judgment on the way the world is approaching the near global refugee crises. Whether in the Middle East, Europe, or the southern U.S. border, there are those seeking safe, secure lives, but are often met with many official obstacles. Worse, they are met with indifference. Within the film there are those who could come and save those doomed on the trawler: the Coast Guard, freighters. But none are willing to break the policies they have been given. None is willing to question the policies or to judge whether life is more important than rules.

This is a new telling of the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25ff.). Jesus spoke that parable in answer to the question “Who is my neighbor (who the Law says I must love)?” In the biblical parable there are those who have important reasons for denying aid to an injured traveler. The story has definite racial, religious, and economic components. The hero of the story is the person who not only takes action to help, but goes to great lengths to do so.

As we look at the refugees around the world or at our border—or even when we look at the hungry and homeless in our streets—we need to consider each day how we will act.  Will we choose to pass by on the other side of the road, like some in the Good Samaritan? Will we do the minimum, safe action, as Rike could have done by sailing on after radioing for help? Will we do all we can to aid those in dire straits?

Photos courtesy of Film Movement.

Filed Under: AFIFest, Film, Reviews Tagged With: Ecumenical Jury Prize, ethics, moral dilemma, Refugees, sailing, Susanne Wolff, Wolfgang Fischer

Called by the Water: 1on1 with Jordan and Aaron Kandell (ADRIFT)

June 3, 2018 by Steve Norton 1 Comment

Written by twin brothers, Jordan and Aaron Kandell (Moana), Adrift tells the amazing true story of Tami Oldham (Shailene Woodley) and Richard Sharp (Sam Claifin), two young lovers who set out on a journey across the ocean in 1983 and sailed directly into a Category 4 hurricane. In the aftermath of the storm, Tami awakens to find Richard badly injured and their boat in ruins. Stranded in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with no communication or navigation tools, Tami must find a way to save them both. According to Jordan, as soon as they discovered Tami’s story, they knew that it was one that needed to be told onscreen.

“We were doing journalistic research for an original survival sea story that we were prepping to write,” begins Jordan. “We have journalistic background and so we always try to [bring a]… sense of reality and authenticity, even if it’s a fictional story. So, I think in the first hour we came upon Tami’s book because it’s incredibly well known as one of the all-time great survival stories. But when you look at these vast geographic and other magazines had lists of 10 best new incredible survival stories, Tami’s was the only one that featured a woman! To us, we just couldn’t believe that. It said everything we wanted to say in our meetup story, which was going to be about twin brothers and loss. I don’t know why we had that idea (laughs). But it was a true story, it was a woman [who] survived incredible odds and it had an incredible love story on top of it. So, it just has everything and we just knew we had to tell it as soon as we read it.”

Having spent a good deal of time with Tami as they were preparing the story, Aaron believes the most inspiring aspect about her was her incredible humility.

“The thing that’s most amazing to us about Tami is that she thinks anybody would have survived the same situation,” Aaron reflects. “She’s the kind of hero who doesn’t think she’s a hero and that’s what makes her more heroic. She just has this strength and this indomitable ability and this humility about her that makes her deeply inspiring [to us]. [It’s the kind of inspiration] where you go, ‘That’s the kind of person that, if I had to be stuck on a boat, I would hope I could be stuck with them’ because that’s the person that’s going to make it no matter what. I don’t think we could have survived that.”

While it’s always a challenge to bring reality to the big screen, it can be even more daunting to have those who lived through the story over-seeing the process. However, with Tami, the Kandells were amazed at her candidness and willingness to explore her past.

According to Jordan, “The most exciting part of the process was that, not only is Tami everything strong and fearless and humble that Aaron said, but she’s also incredibly warm, open, collaborative and willing to trust in us to tell her story. Then, she was willing to open up her polaroids and her ship’s blog and relive this harrowing journey in incredible, powerful detail in interviews with us over the five-year journey it took to make it. That’s just a blessing to have someone do that and, of course, it infuses us with even deeper desire to tell her story.”

Although Tami and Richard had only known each other a few months before their journey out to sea, there is little question of the impact and intensity of their romance. As she spoke to Jordan and Aaron about her experience, they too became convinced that their love provided her with a spiritual sense of strength.

“Tami has always described her relationship with Richard as true love, like a deep soul connection love,” Aaron responds. “To this day, I think she believes that, if he was still here, they would be together. In the movie, they got engaged and were planning to sail the world together and spend their lives together. She told us that she says in her book that she’s not sure exactly what got her through it. She went over the course of the 41-day harrowing journey in a lot of different questions and doubts. We have her ship’s blog where she’s writing things like, ‘Why did you do this to me?’ ‘Why me?’ ‘Am I being punished, God?’ It was a very Jobian thing that she would explore. She doesn’t know if it was a higher power, a guardian spirit or angel voice that spoke to her in her moment of dire need and kept her going and motivated her and kind of guided her but she what she ultimately arrived at—and believes—is that it was Richard’s love that got her through it… Her love for him was [the reason she survived and] what gave her the ultimate strength.”

One of the more compelling elements of the Kandells’ script is its interest in moving seamlessly between past and present. In doing so, the story juxtaposes love and survival in a fascinating ebb and flow. With this in mind, Jordan believes that the interplay between timelines stems from Tami’s book and gives the film an almost musical element.

“Honestly, the inspiration for that comes right out of adapting the book, which is Tami recounting her survival while also processing her emotions through memory of the cinematic lush romance with Richard…,” he muses. “There’s something really beautifully sonic about having these two different melodies that we interweave and create a more intricate harmony when brought together. That structurally and creatively was a challenge and an inspiration. It was also a way to honor what she told us [about how] love is what she believed got her through it. Then, the love story is as important and essential to understanding the survival story. Those two have to be communicating with each other.”

Of course, the Kandells’ are perhaps best known for their role in writing the script for Disney’s Moana. As their first major writing credit, it’s interesting that both stories centre around two adventurous women that strike out onto the ocean. In this case, however, Aaron contends that, while the comparisons are natural, they are not intentional.

“It’s one of those, ‘How did they happen? Is it a coincidence?’ As Tami says, ‘what it steers your path’. We actually found her story before Moana,” he explains. “We started writing the opening scenes of Adrift the day we got called and hired for Moana. We had to put Adrift on hold while we worked on Moana and then came back and started writing Adrift the day after we finished. So, the fact that they happen to be both stories about young women who kind of find their inner strength and power by sailing out to sea and getting into a storm and being mentored by older male mariners is a coincidence or something of the highest order.”

Interestingly, the open water is featured so predominantly in both films that it almost becomes a character unto itself, breathing life into the narrative. In light of this, the Kendalls believe that their interest in the ocean stems primarily from their upbringing on Hawaii, offering them a place of spiritual inspiration.

“I think for us, personally, nature and the ocean are respectful communion has always been our church and our spirituality,” Jordan insists. “It’s where we feel most comfortable. We are more comfortable on water than we are on land. It’s where we go to recharge and cleanse ourselves and find inspiration and creativity. Yeah. This is our fifth screenplay involving the ocean that we’ve actually written. I guess we feel a calling back towards it.”

“Is that the nature in you or is it nurture?,” offers Aaron. “We have salt water in our veins. Our parents threw us the ocean when we were six months old and that was every day for us. So, it’s certainly a function of both of those things. Being born and raised in Hawaii and living here still, there’s a value system to when you live on an island, (in Hawaii certainly, but I think about all island cultures around the world). There’s a respect for and a communion with the ocean because it surrounds you and has you in a blue embrace at all times. So, [you go] to that as your source for joy, for sports, or food. It’s something that a category five hurricane (for story plundering) is something that you can’t escape. We’re surrounded on all sides by it and it failed. Yeah. We ended up blending and diving into it as often as we can, as deeply as we can.”

Adrift is in theatres now.

Filed Under: Film, Interviews, Podcast Tagged With: Aaron Kandell, Adrift, Jordan Kandell, Moana, Pacific Ocean, Richard Sharp, romance, sailing, Sam Claflin, Shailene Woodley, Survival, Tami Oldham

Friday at Newport Beach Film Festival

April 24, 2016 by Darrel Manson Leave a Comment

Flexibility always comes in handy when you make your plans for a festival. For example, the first film I had planned on seeing was for some reason cancelled. That can happen for various reasons, but it does occasionally. I feel for the staff and volunteers who have to deal with that. For me it meant finding something else that fit my time window. As it turned out, I wasn’t disappointed.

from The Weekend Sailor website
from The Weekend Sailor website

In 1973, the first Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race was held. The superstars of sailing took part. The Weekend Sailor is a documentary (looking back forty years) to the Mexican entry, Sayula II. When Mexican businessman Ramon Carlin saw an ad about the race, he thought it would be a good thing to do with his teenage son. He had no boat, no crew, and very little experience. His wife, son, nephews all were part of the crew and a few people from other countries with some experience sailing joined with them. This was a very hazardous voyage (a few sailors from other crews died in the race). This race was definitely over the head of most of the crew. And yet…. The Weekend Sailor is a story not so much about the race (although we follow the boat and crew through the race and its perils) as it is about the bond that developed among this crew and the way they handled themselves in good times and bad.

photo courtesy IFC Films
photo courtesy IFC Films

When I turn in my ballot for audience awards after each film (all audience members get to rate films as excellent, good, fair, or poor) I tend to hold off on using “excellent” except for something exceptional. My first “excellent” of the festival goes to The Man Who Knew Infinity. Dev Patel and Jeremy Irons star in this story about Srinivasa Ramanujan, an uneducated Indian mathematician who is “discovered” by G. H. Hardy of Cambridge. Hardy brings Ramanujan to Cambridge just at the start of World War I. Ramanujan intuited math and likened the theoretical mathematics that they were involved in as art. The film also reflects on the importance of both proof and faith. Hardy was an atheist who could not believe what could not be proven. But Ramanujan saw in mathematics “the thought of god”. The Man Who Knew Infinity opens in theaters next Friday.

Filed Under: Film Tagged With: Festival, mathematics, Newport Beafh Film Festival, sailing

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