August 8, 2004 10:00:00 AM UTC
Rarely, but sometimes, a movie can have an actual physical effect
on you. It gets under your defenses and sidesteps the "it's only a
movie" reflex and creates a visceral feeling that might as well be
real.
Open Water
had that effect on me. After the movie was over, I felt the need to walk in the sunshine and try to cheer myself up.
That's not to say
Open Water
is a thriller that churned my
emotions.
It's a quiet film in which less and less happens as a large, implacable reality begins to form. The ending is so low-key we almost miss it. It tells the story of a couple who go scuba diving and surface to discover that the boat has left without them. The horizon is empty in all directions. They feel very alone.
When night follows day, when thirst becomes unbearable, when
jellyfish sting, when sharks make themselves known, when the boat STILL does not come back for them, their situation becomes a vast, dark, cosmic joke. It is one thing to be in danger of losing your life. It is another thing to have hours and hours to think about it and to discuss how casually the Caribbean vacation was settled on, instead of a ski holiday. The angriest line in the whole movie may be: "We paid to do this." They went to a good deal of trouble and expense in order to be abandoned at sea.
The movie stars Blanchard
Ryan and Daniel Travis as Susan and Daniel. They come from a world of SUVs, cellphones, and busy work schedules, and their lives have been reduced to the fact that they are floating in the ocean. With their scuba outfits, they can float for a long time. Much longer, indeed, than will be of any interest to them.
The sea is calm. The water is cold but not cold enough to kill
them. The opening scenes explain, with implacable logic, the series
of events that leads to two scuba divers being counted twice, so
that the boat returns to port with 18 divers, although it left with
20. If this seems like inexcusable carelessness, well, we can kind
of understand how it happened. And the movie is based on a true
story of two divers left behind.
The movie, written, directed, and edited by Chris Kentis, tells
its story with a direct simplicity that is more harrowing than any
fancy stuff could possibly be.
For most
of an hour we are essentially watching Susan and Daniel float, and talk, and think. Their dialogue is believable: no poetry, no philosophy, no histrionics, just the way people talk when they know each other well and are trying to kid themselves that things are not as bad as they seem. How could they be FORGOTTEN? How could the crew not notice their gear on board, or their missing air tanks? Surely the boat will return. Certainly there will be a search.
They try
it is fatal to drink seawater. Those are certainly
shark fins cutting the surface of the sea. Most sharks won't bother
you, but the word "most" is not anywhere near inclusive enough to
reassure them. There is even a period when Susan discusses whether
this might have all been Daniel's fault: He spent too much time
looking at that damned eel.
"Fault" is as meaningless as any other concept. Nothing they
think or believe has any relevance to the reality they are in. Their
opinions are not solicited. Their past is irrelevant. Their success,
dreams, fears, loves, plans, and friends are all separated from them
by this new thing that has become their lives. To be alive, but
removed from everything they know about how and why to live, is
peculiar: Their senses continue to record their existence, but
nothing they can do has the slightest utility.
The movie is about what a slender thread supports our conviction
that our lives have importance and make sense. We need that
conviction in order to live at all, and when it is irreversibly
taken away from us, what a terrible fate to be left alive to know
it.
*** 1/2 out of 5 stars
