#tami oldham

[moviesframes]

Adrift (2018)

Directed by Baltasar Kormákur

Cinematography by Robert Richardson

[jamiedornaniseverything]

“Will you sail around the world with me?”

[omundonamente]

“I sailed half the world to find you. I’m just not letting that go.”

Photo: Adrift (2018)

[spiderliliez]

Shailene Woodley (as Tami Oldham) Sam Claflin (as Richard Sharp) From the heartbreaking biopic, ADRIFT (2018) Based on the autobiography: Red Sky in Mourning: A True Story of Love, Loss, and Survival at Sea Tami wears a sextant pendant encrusted with a diamond. “It reminds me of how I got home,” she says. “It saved my life.”

[unofficialfilmcritic]

I love the ocean but I also have a healthy fear of it. I'm not a great swimmer, I prefer having the ground under my feet, and I'm a little frightened by the vastness of the ocean. Adrift really played on that feeling.

Adrift is based on a true story of a couple who is sailing a yacht from Tahiti to California when a huge hurricane forms in the Pacific Ocean. The movie starts with Tami waking up in the yacht after the storm and setting a new course now that the yacht is damaged and supplies are depleted, and the desperate journey is interspersed with flashbacks of how she met Richard and how they ended up sailing the yacht. The filming is actually pretty great because you spend the whole movie thinking one thing and then suddenly, in the last few minutes, your whole perception changes. And you wonder, how could anyone survive this?

It's a powerful story of survival and love and courage. It's strange to find hope in the stories of other people's suffering and loss, but survival stories always give me a sense of hope. A sense that if I were in a similar situation, I too could survive. A sense that disaster doesn't have to define us and that we can make it through terrible things. I'm blown away by the resilience and bravery of Tami, and by the incredible acting of Shailene Woodley and Sam Claflin. They brought these people to life and so poignantly expressed the terror and love that Tami and Richard experienced. It truly was a good movie and I recommend seeing it.

[ryansreviews]

Adrift: Review

The Big Seasick

If you’ve been following the recent films of Baltasar Kormákur, you’ve probably noticed a pattern of Mother Nature putting the lives of good people at risk. From the perilously frosty climate of Mount Everest, to the ferocious sea storm faced by the characters in his latest, our protagonists can barely take a breath before they’re experiencing a close scrape with death. Yet, while Everest followed this narrative from the perspective of a large ensemble cast, Adrift triumphs by anchoring its story of impossible adversity within the understated but convincing relationship between two people.

Set in Tahiti 1983, this follows the incredible real-life experiences of Tami Oldham (Shailene Woodley), an American traveller whose free spirit pulls her in the direction of English Seaman Richard Sharp (Sam Claflin). When Richard is offered an all expenses paid opportunity to sail his friend’s boat to San Diego, the couple set sail for a trip that will change both of their lives, if not for the happiest of reasons. Barely halfway into their journey, they are struck by the deadly Hurricane Raymond, which critically damages their boat, and leaves Richard with a broken leg.

In an interesting narrative decision, writers Aaron and Jordan Kendell counterpoise the burgeoning central relationship with the misery of day-to-day survival in the present. The result is an unorthodox timeframe that feels slightly disorientating at first – the relationship doesn’t get as much time to flourish at the start – but increasingly makes sense as the film continues. Though we don’t see the shipwreck sequence until much later, the hard-hitting devastation of the build-up ensures that when it comes, it’s impressively horrifying.

Given its refreshing approach to time structure, it’s the story that ends up feeling predictable in comparison. With a raft of familiar survival movie touchstones – the hallucinations, the euphoria at seeing some rare rainfall – it’s a formula that has been done to death recently in superior films like All is Lost and Life of Pi. Meanwhile, it wouldn’t take a meteorologist to foresee a twist in the third act.

Thankfully, the film is kept well on course by a striking performance from Woodley. While she and an incapacitated Claflin do share believable chemistry, it’s her emotions that we rely on to navigate the film, and she completely commands the attentions. Somehow making mundane tasks like repairing the ship and rationing food seem interesting, Woodley shows her character’s resourcefulness, but also her incredible resolve in the face of heartbreak, effortlessly selling the tragic love story at the heart of the storm.

Though it engages with familiar lost-at-sea movie tropes, this is still a moving and distressing tale of love and human survival, with a knockout central performance from Woodley.

★★★

[jamiedornaniseverything]

[as-pessoas-sempre-se-vao]

Vidas à Deriva ( Adrift )