Sometimes you need to see a really decent documentary and not a work of fiction on screen to be reminded of the power that movies can evoke. Deep Water is a film that will grip you and won't let you go for a long time after the credits have rolled.
The thing here is that I really don't want to spoil the experience for you, summarizing the strange things this doc chronicles would ruin it entirely. Let me tell you it's about a sailing race around the world in the late 60s and about one unfortunate competitor in particular named Donald Crowhurst. He was a regular guy with great ambitions, driven by his desire to prove himself to the world. An unbelievably enormous undertaking like a single-handed, non-stop, around-the-world yacht race was just the thing to do so. Crowhurst's painfully obvious lack of any prior sailing experience didn't hold him back to go through with his plan to not just finish the race but also to win it.
Directors Louise Osmond and Jerry Rothwell do a great job here at creating something truly fascinating and emotionally gripping. What they accomplish is to make Crowhurst a tragic hero of Shakespearean proportions, an utter fool and an epic dreamer at the same time. I personally cannot remember the last time I was as engaged watching a film as I was watching Deep Water. For me this might just the best documentary since Kevin Macdonald's outstanding One Day In September. I recommend Deep Water to anyone and everyone out there, films like this one are the reason I love movies so much.
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