Film

A deceptively potent tragedy marketed as a yachting adventure, Deep Water will absorb viewers who know nothing about the nearly Conradian circumstances of England’s 1968 “Golden Globe” boat race. The contest—a nonstop global circumnavigation sponsored by a newspaper—attracted nine solo sailors, including amateur Donald Crowhurst, who literally staked his family’s home on his success. In an era before computers and GPS satellites, Crowhurst’s zeal made him an instant underdog sensation; this doc’s trove of stunning 16mm footage (unobtrusively narrated by Tilda Swinton) includes a heartbreaking shot of a champagne magnum not cracking on Crowhurst’s self-designed vessel, over and over again. Bad luck.

Unprepared, Crowhurst quickly fell behind at sea. His boat began to leak. So he started to assemble the most elaborate lie to stay hidden but in the race. And it’s here that a kind reviewer should probably stop, only because the ultimate picture that comes into focus is not a survival story but an escape route. Like many a Herzog documentary, Deep Water captures the awesome implacability of nature: huge, swelling waves that care nothing for the fortunes of one man. It also captures an equally mysterious force at play: the desperate, unquenchable need for success and the limitless ends to which some might go to stave off shame.