Directed by: Baltasar Kormákur
Starring: Shailene Woodley, Sam Claflin
Rated PG-13, 96 minutes
Some disaster movies focus on disasters happening, and some focus on how we respond to disasters that have happened. “Adrift” is the latter, following in the same footsteps of films like “127 Hours” and “Gravity,” but with this film, an adaptation of a true story, Baltasar Kormákur (who previously directed another disaster movie, “Everest”) has crafted a new type of disaster film, one that focuses less on physical acts of self-preservation and instead devotes itself to the mental toll of such an experience.
This movie is also something of a paradox, in that it feels like it shouldn’t work. The storyline, the integral part of any disaster movie, is itself skeletal, with precious few details given and little attention paid to the details we do get. What’s more, the movie is lacking completely in nuance and complexity, choosing the path of least resistance every time it comes to conveying the purpose or feeling of a scene; consider the multiple expository scenes in which characters flatly describe their life stories to each other. And the performances by our leads, Shailene Woodley (“Divergent”) and Sam Claflin (“Me Before You”) are unremarkable, saddled with terrible dialogue and dry emoting. And yet, despite all its shortcomings (or perhaps because of them, in a shoot-the-moon sort of way), “Adrift” is also the most profound and impressive film that has come out yet in 2018, a film that catches us off guard and makes the most of it.
The film’s biggest hurdle, and ultimately its greatest asset, is that it’s based on a true story. Woodley plays real-life sailor Tami Oldham, who in 1983 fell in love with a charming drifter, Richard Sharp (Claflin), and quickly made plans to sail around the world with him on his boat. Their maiden voyage together turned into a harrowing ordeal when a hurricane hit, leaving their little vessel broken and floating helplessly through the Pacific Ocean some hundreds of miles from land; it took nearly six weeks of drifting at the ocean’s whim to reach safety.
By itself this is an exciting, if not especially interesting, story, but “Adrift” tells it through flashbacks, which add layers of tension to the survivalist tale at the movie’s center. For instance, it’s not until the film’s back half that we learn that Tami and Richard are engaged to be married, but the revelation—which Kormákur treats less as a surprise than as just another piece of their romance, as though it were a subplot and not the emotional core of the film—shades how we recall the scenes that have already passed. And when the flashbacks finally catch up to the present moment, Kormákur delivers one of the great disaster moments of recent memory, a catastrophe scene executed with such technical finesse and creativity that it would be worth watching the entire film again just for that moment alone.
“Adrift” also features a great boom of a plot twist—granted, not a very original one, but one that still challenges us by flying in the face of the true story the film is based on. It’s a twist that defies us, but it also asks us to think harder about how films depict stories that really happened. For Kormákur, film does not have to be a literal translation of events onto celluloid; the phrase “based on a true story” is less of a burden and more of a philosophical question. These events happened, but they obviously did not happen to Shailene Woodley and Sam Claflin; if we could accept that much without hesitation, why not accept a full fictionalization of these events? Who said we have to take our true stories literally?
That “Adrift” exploits our expectations like this is only half of its success. Having rattled us with both action and deceit, the film leaves us feeling unmoored and afloat, and ultimately receptive to its underlying story of love and sacrifice. Suddenly, all the overly simplistic depictions of Tami and Richard’s romance make sense, all the seemingly bland acting choices and uninspired dialogue feel poignant and immediate. More than just a showcase of ocean photography and special effects, “Adrift” turns out to be an indirect lesson in how to be direct, in how to sail directly into the wind.
Originally published in The Harvard Press on 6/8/18.