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Herald Rating: * * * * *
Knowing in advance how it all turned out cannot rob this remarkable movie of any of its drama, although ignorance of the events probably adds to the kick. The story has been told before, not least in The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst by Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall, published barely a year after the events it narrates. It is a compelling tragedy of a modern-day Icarus, the story of a man doomed by a deceit he perpetrates for good motives.
Crowhurst was one of nine sailors who set out in the spring of 1968 on a round-the-world, non-stop yacht race for solo sailors. It was won by Robin Knox-Johnston, who was in fact the only one to finish, but Crowhurst was always the least likely: he left, ill-prepared, only hours before the departure deadline, and was having trouble with his gear before he was out of sight of land.
Within a week, he records in his log that the cockpit hatch is leaking ("This bloody boat is falling to pieces," he writes) and quickly he finds himself trapped between the devil of financial guarantees he has made at home and the deep sea of the Southern Ocean which his boat can certainly not withstand.
The details of the escape plan he devised are best not detailed here but it spoils no surprise to say that it failed for the most dramatic and unexpected of reasons. Assisted by John Smithson, the producer of the remarkable documentary of mountaineering survival, Touching the Void, and abetted by a haunting score by Harry Escott and Molly Nyman, Osmond and Rothwell turn the story into an edge-of-the-seat tale of doomed derring-do. They draw on an extensive arsenal of material: news footage; contemporary and modern-day interviews; some marvellous film shot by another competitor, Bernard Moitessier, who is in some ways am even more quixotic figure; and the scant 16mm footage and extensive audio Crowhurst himself compiled.
These last resources, together with the log books in which he records his descent into despair, make for the most chilling sequences. It is not merely a dramatised historical document: the interviews capture the poignant personal tragedy in which Crowhurst was just one player. It is, in the end, a film as sad and touching as it is dramatic.
Directors: Louise Osmond, Jerry Rothwell
Running time: 93 mins
Rating: PG, low-level offensive language
Screening: Rialto
Verdict: The best documentary of the year tells the engrossing story of a round-the-world sailor whose dreams turn to calamity
