I can't wait to see this in the cinema

[ronsurf]

I think Moitessier lost it a bit as well. Don't forget he never came home.

Of all the books written about the Globe race, I liked Moitessier's the most, although it does lose focus towards the end. It's beautifully written, and captures the emotion of being at sea. Too many sailing books are re-writes of the logbook and can be a bit too dry.

Moitessier's life would make a fascinating movie.

 

[oldmanofthehills]

Moitessier was I fear channeling his inner Gauguin. He never returned to his wife in Paris and headed of the Pacific Islands to find a new and probably younger partner. Wonderful sailor but ever bit as much of a d...head as Crowhurst. Tetley and RKJ are the only ones I actually admire unresevedly

 

[Major_Clanger]

Moitessier was I fear channeling his inner Gauguin. He never returned to his wife in Paris and headed of the Pacific Islands to find a new and probably younger partner. Wonderful sailor but ever bit as much of a d...head as Crowhurst. Tetley and RKJ are the only ones I actually admire unresevedly

If (and I presume you know something of Crowhurst's story) after availing yourself of the facts as we know them, your considered opinion is that Crowhurst was a dickhead, then that says far more about the failings of your own character than it does about his.

 

[oldmanofthehills]

If (and I presume you know something of Crowhurst's story) after availing yourself of the facts as we know them, your considered opinion is that Crowhurst was a dickhead, then that says far more about the failings of your own character than it does about his.

Crowhurst lied to everyone, left behind half his stuff out of confusion. Bravery does not make you a good or sensible person

 

[laika]

Moitessier's life would make a fascinating movie.

I can recommend Michel Barrault's biography.

I note fwiw that "crowhurst" is available on Amazon Prime

 

[laika]

I watched "Crowhurst" so you don't have to...

I strongly suspect UK-WOOZY's review in post 31 will be agreed with by many.

It seems the critics liked it though. The Guardian and the Times gave it 4 stars and it has 78% on rotten tomatoes. It is stylised in a manner which won't be everyone's cup of tea (see UK-WOOZY's post and add in sepia tones ) and to be honest wasn't really what I was up for on a friday night either. Having said that I think Justin Salinger who plays Crowhurst pulls off a decent performance and as a depiction of descent into madness it's considerably more convincing than the sanitised Firth version. As an evening's light entertainment though "The Mercy" wins hands down.

Probably best avoided by forumites who like their movies mainstream and with a high degree of sailing accuracy. On the plus side if you make it to the end credits there is a note to say "apologies to ketch owners everywhere" as the movie's Teignmouth Electron does miss a rather noticeable feature of the original. On the downside there's also text saying that today nearly every sailor uses a version of the Navicator. hmm.

 

[BelleSerene]

Crowhurst lied to everyone, left behind half his stuff out of confusion. Bravery does not make you a good or sensible person

Tends to make you a hero or a pariah, depending which way events flip. It’s a victor’s history.

 

[oldmanofthehills]

Tends to make you a hero or a pariah, depending which way events flip. It’s a victor’s history.

The old saying goes "Pity the Land that has Heroes". Either its so desperate that men must die to protect the land, or the men are so desperate for glory that they risk the well being of land and family.

I have sympathy for Crowhurst, but my admiration is mixed at best. RKJ won by being in an undramatic boat sailing an undramatic fashion, but Crowhurst made for a better Tragedy.

 

[BelleSerene]

RKJ won by being in an undramatic boat sailing an undramatic fashion, but Crowhurst made for a better Tragedy.

RKJ's win is a great example of the sailing strategy that to win a race, you first have to finish. No-one else finished.

Incidentally, he his a true hero, not for his racing but for his donation of the prize money to Crowhurst's widow. What a man.

 

[RichardS]

deleted by Moderator

Presumably a timely observation from the producer of "Crowhurst"?

Richard

 

[BelleSerene]

The movie is a shocker, I’m afraid. Having long been interested in the story, read some of the books and seen the documentary (Deep Water) and recently the Colin Firth The Mercy film, I watched this one last night. To its credit, it was put together on a budget of just half a million pounds. The producers of The Mercy, being filmed at the same time to cash in on the 50th anniversary of the race, bought the rights to Crowhurst, agreeing to release it shortly after their major picture. Crowhurst’s promoters claimed their low-budget film would be emotionally truer, rawer, more real. And so I hoped - with the memory of the Danish film A Hijacking after the somewhat synthetic Captain Phillips in my mind.

It wasn’t to be. If you saw The Mercy, you’ve seen enough.

It’s true, we sailors might obsess about the nautical details. But does Joe Public really think we punctuate our conversations with ‘Over’ just for the fun of it, with no need to push or release a press-to-talk switch to maintain conversation over a one-way medium?

The acting was somewhat ham. The film starts with awkward lines brazenly setting up the plot - and Crowhurst’s inane conversation with himself about his routeing alternatives while applying big hands to a small chart also comes across as something out of the local village acting guild.

Even the choice of actor is unfortunate. Colin Firth managed (for me, at least) to capture something of the excited spirit of the engineer and technical entrepreneur, constantly kneading the challenge in front of him until it shaped up into something he could solve. Justin Salinger just came across as hapless and improbable in the role.

The language is unconvincing, too. Dates are always given in the American format (‘On June First’, ‘October 31st’) - now sometimes used after fifty years of influence from American media, but a mangled way of expressing the date to any Brit in the late 1960s. Crowhurst’s commercial sponsor signs off a telegraph with ‘Cheers, Rodney’ - language he might have used if raising a glass to a guy called Rodney but not when saying goodbye and when he was the guy called Rodney.

And the boat. Oh, the boat. Gone is the mizzen mast: this was a sloop now. Some quite fancy curved chines graced her outer hulls: a quite impossible feature for Teignmouth Electron’s plywood construction. Multiplait braided rope with lovely coloured inflections adorns the rigging - always with just a single turn taken around a winch. A self-tailing winch, of course, in the ‘60s. Controlled by a handle with a retaining lock.

Surely non-mariners get that when you’re sailing around the world on your own, you don’t change into your pyjamas - yes, beautifully ironed pale blue pyjamas - each night and lie straight on your back as if the nurse is about to come around the ward to turn the lights out? And that when you awake, you might just feel some curiosity about your position and the state of the vessel rather than lying in bed contemplating the day ahead? Or that you won’t use water from a single tank on which your survival for the next several months depends, to wash your dishes? Or that a pot balanced on a round-bottomed paraffin stove balanced on a worktop might not be how people do it at sea? Or that the Southern Atlantic might not be quite as impenetrably murky as that?

Lots else was jarringly unrealistic, too. As a brass band strikes up Elgar’s march to Land of Hope and Glory, the camera focuses on the trumpeter’s fingers, curiously unchanging over three adjacent notes of the Bb scale. Crowhurst tunes his radio to a Morse code transmission, and then writes down utterly unrelated letters and numerals. None of the unfinished electronics project that he bore with him clutters the saloon. He manages to eat every meal at a gloriously stable, horizontal saloon table. Yet he’s always leaning nervously over it, as if something is about to happen, which in the almost unending flat calm of his filmed days at sea, it isn’t.

Meanwhile, the producers gave the hymn Jerusalem to some incompetent organist who couldn’t manage Hubert Parry (the composer of the only rendition you or anyone in Crowhurst’s age would have heard) who played it with crude harmonies worthy of a Chinese computer programmer’s arrangement for telephone on-hold music. And from the sideboard in the Argentinian dining room where Crowhurst feasts during his illicit repair stop, he attempts communication with home using one of a pair of iconic British GPO telephones.

Come back, Colin Firth. All is forgiven.

 

[StefenMaze]

thanks Rosa

 

[oldmanofthehills]

I fear some folk dont understand theatre. In Shakespear 5 oddbods wave fake sticks and represent an army and a man cries out pretending to die, but we see what Hamlet is about. Yes Crowhurst was clunky but it is a tale of hubris and madness to rival the old greek tales. It was not a documentary but an exploration and I liked it. I even admired the retro 70s look of a boat I knew was pretty 21st century in instrumentation in its day job