There are only 2 reasons I am giving this documentary 5 out of 10 instead of 1 out of 10. 1: It was well done from a cinematic perspective and I have watched a lot of crappy made documentaries and this is not one. 2: I do have extreme sympathy for the family that Donald Crowhurst left behind and I think this was done with their fragile hearts in mind. Maybe the only honorable thing in the whole film.
To sum this one up for you, this documentary, in my opinion, is an extension of the lies that engulfed the voyage of Donald Crowhurst and ultimately his life. If you stripped the beautiful images, music, weeping family/friends and lengthy English imaginative/over the top vocabulary to describe this man's self built predicament, you are left with a man who wanted to be famous and have all the glory of a king in exchange for zero sacrifice.
Now I hate to stomp on a man's life that has already come to pass, but if something like this has been produced for public consumption, I feel I can offer up my opinion and still be within good taste. This entire documentary to me was one giant farce set to bring sympathy and understanding to a truth that is quite the opposite.
Donald Crowhurst wanted to sail around the world and had his own personal ideas as to why. I can guess at why, but no one truly knows outside of Donald. What seems evident to me is Donald was not interested in overcoming hardships or coming to terms with unrealized expectations/failure. In the face of failures, he consistently chose to either lie or run. The only thing he never failed at in this spectacle was choosing to run or lie. It is as though he thought he could just pack up a boat and truly sail around the world while eating a bologna sandwich. When the "stuff" hit the fan early in his voyage, he chose to cower in the middle of the water between Africa and S. America and wait for over 6 months to rejoin with the rest of the sailors who actually went around the world and hopefully cruise into 3rd or 4th place under the radar. Not to forget, he also sent messages back home lying about his location and speed of travel. He even claimed a world record! To his horror, events unfold that leave Donald in 1st pace with days left and will most definitely expose his lies under the scrutiny he will surely receive when he arrives home. Faced with another decision of manning up because he has a family to lead and that loves him and needs him, he chose to drift away and commit suicide instead of facing the music. But before committing suicide, he basically writes an angry letter to God or to the absence of God...but ultimately blaming the cruel world/god for his self inflicted wounds.
Now the only reason I can think that this documentary was done in such a way that you might think he was some conflicted individual trying to save the world from hunger, is as a gift to the obviously "still filled with pain" family he left behind. I mean, I kept shouting during this thing "he is just a selfish liar! Quit making him out to be Gandhi!" So he didn't want to face his failures. Who does? The hard thing to do is to face them with dignity and go on. Not to conjure up some giant hoax and when it all implodes run away and kill your self. I can think of no other reason to illustrate Donald's decision's on the sail boat in the way this documentary does other than part of an agreement to get his wife and son to participate. You keep having to remind yourself that this is not a man that was drafted to some war or sent to a concentration camp. They keep narrating the decisions he faced as if he was given the choice of only being able to save one of his two children from a fire or something. Reality just keeps telling you that this perspective is a farce. There was only one hard decision Donald had to make and it was early on when he knew he couldn't make it around the world. Either risk his life to finish the trip, turn around and end it short of expectations or create a great hoax and ignore reality all together. ALL OTHER "HARD" DECISIONS AFTER THAT ARE A DIRECT RESULT OF HIS DECISION TO CREATE A HOAX! So after that, they are all self inflicted dilemmas.
Careful watching this one. While it is well done from cinematic perspective, if you have any sense of purpose to be genuine in life, you might throw something at your HDTV and break it.
To sum this one up for you, this documentary, in my opinion, is an extension of the lies that engulfed the voyage of Donald Crowhurst and ultimately his life. If you stripped the beautiful images, music, weeping family/friends and lengthy English imaginative/over the top vocabulary to describe this man's self built predicament, you are left with a man who wanted to be famous and have all the glory of a king in exchange for zero sacrifice.
Now I hate to stomp on a man's life that has already come to pass, but if something like this has been produced for public consumption, I feel I can offer up my opinion and still be within good taste. This entire documentary to me was one giant farce set to bring sympathy and understanding to a truth that is quite the opposite.
Donald Crowhurst wanted to sail around the world and had his own personal ideas as to why. I can guess at why, but no one truly knows outside of Donald. What seems evident to me is Donald was not interested in overcoming hardships or coming to terms with unrealized expectations/failure. In the face of failures, he consistently chose to either lie or run. The only thing he never failed at in this spectacle was choosing to run or lie. It is as though he thought he could just pack up a boat and truly sail around the world while eating a bologna sandwich. When the "stuff" hit the fan early in his voyage, he chose to cower in the middle of the water between Africa and S. America and wait for over 6 months to rejoin with the rest of the sailors who actually went around the world and hopefully cruise into 3rd or 4th place under the radar. Not to forget, he also sent messages back home lying about his location and speed of travel. He even claimed a world record! To his horror, events unfold that leave Donald in 1st pace with days left and will most definitely expose his lies under the scrutiny he will surely receive when he arrives home. Faced with another decision of manning up because he has a family to lead and that loves him and needs him, he chose to drift away and commit suicide instead of facing the music. But before committing suicide, he basically writes an angry letter to God or to the absence of God...but ultimately blaming the cruel world/god for his self inflicted wounds.
Now the only reason I can think that this documentary was done in such a way that you might think he was some conflicted individual trying to save the world from hunger, is as a gift to the obviously "still filled with pain" family he left behind. I mean, I kept shouting during this thing "he is just a selfish liar! Quit making him out to be Gandhi!" So he didn't want to face his failures. Who does? The hard thing to do is to face them with dignity and go on. Not to conjure up some giant hoax and when it all implodes run away and kill your self. I can think of no other reason to illustrate Donald's decision's on the sail boat in the way this documentary does other than part of an agreement to get his wife and son to participate. You keep having to remind yourself that this is not a man that was drafted to some war or sent to a concentration camp. They keep narrating the decisions he faced as if he was given the choice of only being able to save one of his two children from a fire or something. Reality just keeps telling you that this perspective is a farce. There was only one hard decision Donald had to make and it was early on when he knew he couldn't make it around the world. Either risk his life to finish the trip, turn around and end it short of expectations or create a great hoax and ignore reality all together. ALL OTHER "HARD" DECISIONS AFTER THAT ARE A DIRECT RESULT OF HIS DECISION TO CREATE A HOAX! So after that, they are all self inflicted dilemmas.
Careful watching this one. While it is well done from cinematic perspective, if you have any sense of purpose to be genuine in life, you might throw something at your HDTV and break it.