The Mercy

source: The Mercy

....the documentary "Deep Water" does a better job, it's worth finding.

In the 60's a guy decides one day that he should risk all he has to race around the world in a yacht. This is his story. The first half of the movie concerns itself with the technical, financial and emotional aspects of the trip. There are some obvious hurdles to this proposed jaunt around the globe. The main character lacks money, experience, time and the most rudimentary knowledge of sailing in the high seas. Because of the stiff-upper-lipness of the period everyone is very optimistic and polite about what appears, at first hand, his obvious suicide mission. The back end of the film is about the race. Watching someone bob around on the sea in a tiny boat it turns out is very, very dull. This cast do a grand job bringing the reserved characters to life; Rachel Weisz easily steals the show . The film is non-judgmental, non-sensational and well crafted. It is nice to watch something that hangs around in second gear; but saying that it does (ironically) make for quite a dry watch. This is a perfect film for a Sunday when you feel like something serious but not too taxing.

Not impressed. I was expecting more to the story. Very slow told. Didn´t have the patience to watch all the way through. Some fast forward was involved.

A fine follow up for James Marsh after his Oscar nominated "The Theory of Everything" This film is about a amateur sailor who hits the sea because he takes part in a competition to become the fast sailor to cross the sea on a boat ... If you expect a survival drama a la "All is Lost" you will be mistaken. Sure the film is also about survival.... physically but also mentally because it challenges its protagonist with a lot of moralic questions and situations. In fact the protagonist does it himself. The film is about overcoming your mistakes and if you are able to face them or not. Colin Firth is really good in the leading role and his casting was quite inspired. He gives one of his very best post Oscar performances. I also love how he developed. A truly interesting character for a great actor. Rachel Weisz was also fine, but often the material she was given to, did not justify her great talent. It was a rather seconary role that at least allowed her to show off at the end. The film had many nice shots, a really great score by late Johan Johannsson who delivered one of his last scores to that film. A great and rather unexpected ending (if you dont know the true story). Highly recommended to those who enjoy good acting cinema.

The Mercy: A tale of an ameteur sailor who took on an endeavour which was beyond him and resulted him in perpetuating a great hoax for months but ended with his disappearance and likely suicide. Donald Crowhurst (Colin Firth) was determined to enter into and to complete the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race in 1968. But his experience was restricted to inland waterways. Undaunted he designs his own yacht for the competition. Borrowing money from local businessman Stanley Best (Ken Stott) and retaining Rodney Hallworth (David Thewlis) as a publicist his plans are set in motion. But delays and problems occur. He is pressured into setting off before his boat is ready by Best and Hallworth. Once at sea things start to fall apart as his yacht is unseaworthy and he makes little progress. But the grasping Best holds the titles to Crowhurst's business and house and he will lose everything if he abandons the race. Rachel Weisz plays Clare Crowhurst, the wife who is left to try and keep the family together while her sailor husband sails around the world. The pressures, financial and psychological also take a toll on her but she resolutely supports Donald. Crowhurst starts to lie about the distance he has travelled and this is made worse by Hallworth further embellishing the claims. As he gets caught in his his web of lies, Donald begins to despair and sinks into depression, eventually adrift in the horse latitudes amid the Sargasso Sea. He hallucinates, seeing his family and even hearing horses on deck. While the outcome of the film is known, director James Marsh and writer Scott burns keep the tension going as the tale unfolds and nothing seems to be inevitable. The rage and calm of sea is beautifully captured by cinematographer Eric Gautier and editors Jinx Godfrey & Joan Sobel. 8/10.

SPOILER: Who doesn't love Firth! This is an excellent accounting of a failed quest for a dream.

And sure was released for public viewing over couple of days, then the DVD release will be directly thrown into the $1.00 bin in Wal-mart. Making this kind of film really needed some investors not focused on making money but just want to shoot a picture with good story. But this film only achieved half of it for the family outing part before this guy decided to challenge himself to a solo voyage around the globe. Some reviewers have mentioned couple of similar films related to sail in the ocean and lost. What came into my mind is the pathetic movie, "All is Lost (2013)" by Robert Redford. The problem of both films was when these two guys on the land, things around them in their daily lives could be witnessed and remembered by the people around them, once they started on their solo voyage at the early stage, we could still got the record when they communicated with the concerned and related parties on land, but once they suddenly lost contact, all the on-going situations would have to be dramatized by fictitious guessing. The mind set of those adventurers are just a bit different from the normal guys like most of us. Adventurers would challenge themselves and the Mother Nature. Climbing the highest Everest, diving into the deep sea...whatever, they just want to prove that they could beat the odds. But even you've conquered the summit, or what ever, what's the big deal, really? Even you've survived in the end, or breaking a world new record, what's the big deal? One person's achievement won't change the course of the orbit of the Earth, sun still going up on the East...people around you still fart, you still have to report you income tax, pay the utilities bills...nothing ever changed a bit. There were dreamers like what we saw in "The Man Who Would be King (1975)", but even that guy really succeeded, the other part of the world won't even heard about it. So, if you decided to leave your wife and kids behind, trying to prove you got some new toughness or stubbornness that enabled you to do some solo stunt on the sea, "Bon Voyage!" is like your stupid praying to God, nothing but a "Good Luck!" Wishful Thinking.

When people disappear often it is with very little trace, the world and the person's family are left wondering what happened to them, where they were and whether they will ever see them again. This was not what happened in the case of Donald Crowhurst. On October 31st 1968 Crowhurst set out on a great expedition around the world, alone, on a boat as part of the Sunday Times' Golden Globe Competition. On July 10th 1969 his boat was found, unoccupied filled with log books written by Crowhurst describing his entire journey. The Mercy is the latest telling of this real story, there having been many books, documentaries, and films made prior to it. Directed by James Marsh, written by Scott Z. Burns and with Colin Firth in the lead role this film tells the tragedy from beginning to end, presenting Crowhurst's experience as well as his wife and children's and the tale being told to the general public by the media. Visually stunning, well acted and tear-jerking, I loved this film for its sincerity and quietness allowing us into the head of a man struggling through crisis. Firth felt perfectly cast. He brought amazing subtlety to the role, his ability to convey the internal thoughts of the character simply through facial expression and gait shows his phenomenal ability as an actor. He shows the break down of Crowhurst's British 'stiff upper lip' and descent into mental breakdown with constraint and melancholia. This powerful performance bought me to tears, greatly aided by clever slow reveal cinematography and eerie sound design. And that's something I have to talk about in this film; sound design. An often neglected and unrecognised art this film used sound and silence phenomenally. It created suspense, fear and empathy; as the film progressed both the sound and silence became deafening, adding immensely to our understanding of Crowhurst's mental state. Until this film I never new how maddening simply the sound of a pencil rolling back and forth across a table could be. If I have one gripe about this film it must be this; we have yet another example of the female lead feeling under-developed and two dimensional. Although Rachel Weisz's performance as Claire Crowhurst, Donald's wife, was emotional and, too an extent, felt realistic, she looked as if she'd been plucked off a 50's fashion magazine titled 'The housewife'. This is not a criticism of Weisz as an actress but more in the direction and writing. She felt like a cartoon-ish, cardboard cut out of a woman; dressed fashionably, young and beautiful and glossy. She did not feel like the wife of a failing business owner. Personally I feel the film should've spent more time on her developing her emotional depth and character arch making the story about the entire family, or they should've had even less of her, focusing solely on Crowhurst himself. It generally felt as if they couldn't decide if Claire (and a few other of the people back on land) were main characters, supporting roles or extras, so their balance of screen time was wrong. Despite this, one of my favourite things about this film is it's beautiful sense of reality in Crowhurst himself. There is too often in all films, but significantly in biopics or the beloved based-on-a-true-story films, a tendency to paint characters as all hero or all villain. Here however Firth portrays Crowhurst as a real man; loving, over-ambitious, determined and deeply flawed but not malicious, not conniving. A director could've chosen to paint this man, this non-fictitious man, it the light or good or evil but no. Marsh chose real. And with such a sensitive story to portray this felt the most appropriate voice to give the sailor and his family. He was a real man, struggling with his sense of self, put in the face of an adversity that he could not escape. He did not succeed and win the day, he did not purposely deceive them all as part of a horrible plot, he simply.. broke. And this film showed that amazingly well.

This was a role made for colin firth,with his low relaxed voice and correct dictation,he does a decent job,in a not too well written script and plot. having read the book,seen documentaries,and other ffilms about this conning and misfortunate advetourous edison/tesla like characcter, i would have expected more. why did he cheat are meagerly told,and the faith of his family after he vanishes shoulld also have been better told. the settings though are lovely,especially the part of teignmouth in the movie.its very authentic and well made. light an d editing are fine,the score are engaging.