Big River Man

One man against nature. Big River Man tells a tale of Martin Strel from Slovenia who is an endurance swimmer. However, he's not your typical athlete. The man is fat, a drunk and 53 years old and about to break the record and swim the entire length of the Amazon...

David Walliams is nothing compared to this man. A former gambler who started endurance swimming past 40, he's tackled the biggest rivers in the world. He might be a nobody in the celebrity world, but in Slovenia he's a big deal and this film, narrated by his son, is a portrait of a fascinating man on an incredible journey.

We start as his son paints us the picture. His father is a quiet, friendly, charming man who has already swam the Mississippi, the Danube and the Yangtze which includes some horrible footage of the pollution and dead bodies floating past the swimmer. He is constantly drunk and watching the man squirt red wine into his mouth from a water bottle while he's wading in water is a sight to behold, but yet he is accustomed to it. This Slovenian work hard/play hard lifestyle isn't a healthy one and yet he persists with swimming for days on end. He is a remarkable man, even if just for the fact that he's alive let alone having the stamina of a superhero. But yet he has his flaws ...

As the Amazon swim kicks off, we get a first-hand look at what makes the man tick - but his son is ever-present to fill in the rest. There's talk of his abusive childhood, his past job as a professional gambler, his love of America interspersed with footage of the swimming, but it is on his Amazonian trial that we see a human pushed to the absolute physical and mental limit.

Within a few days Martin is sunburnt and is drinking copious amounts of beer which is merely dehydrating him, which he refuses to believe. So he is given a rag to put over his face and a hat, making him look like the swimming elephant man instead of Martin and in a way, it is the first step to someone losing their humanity and becoming merely a vessel. The poor swimmer slowly goes insane, mirrored in his navigational partner and not only that but his heart is about to give out any second. He is hearing voices and soon remains absolutely silent, refusing to move if it isn't swimming and attaching car batteries to his head in a strange method to make himself sane. What starts as a jolly test of endurance, soon becomes a horrible nightmare.

As he nears the end, it becomes slightly uncomfortable to watch and once it ends you feel like Martin will never be the same and according to his son, he isn't. He has recurring dreams that he has to begin the swim again and the river soon picks him up and lets him fly over it. It's this sense of fighting your own demons in a path to God that is touched upon briefly but dismissed because it doesn't necessarily have to be God, but a certain inner peace which Martin is clearly aiming for, yet this underlying theme of Jesus does tend to crop up. His sense of achievement and near-martyrdom is supposed to give hope around the world yet falls unflatteringly on it's face once the talk shows soon lose interest. It's not just a struggle through a river, but through life and you might meet people along the way, it might have it's up's and downs and it might be dangerous but like this film, it was quite a journey.

Although I recommend this documentary, it was far from perfect. Some scenes, and especially some certain shots, looked forced and fake making me judge the whole piece in a cynical manner - something that is risky for such a project. There were also moments I didn't quite understand such as why his son wouldn't be allowed in an ambulance but the camera crew are, which added to the melodramatic effect it didn't need. I don't think it was very well shot either and the directing was formulaic and try-hard with lingering pointless shots that weren't interesting - whereas it would have done better concentrating on the content and the natural beauty of the area rather than trying to make it look too Hollywood. How many reflections of things off the water do I want to see in 90 minutes? Not one really, it's so cliche, which is a shame as the subject matter certainly wasn't. I feel anyone could have been there with a camera and still got out this film no matter who was behind it and for that it shows good foresight but not enough practical inspiration to see it through.

A great film about a great man, I'm sure your Dad would love it if he feels like he's getting on a bit.

Rating: 8/10

The American

Dutch music video director Anton Corbijn returns from the success of his first full length feature 'Control' with a take on the novel 'A Very Private Gentleman' starring George Clooney as a gunmaker hiding out in an Italian village. Is this 'thoughtful thriller', as Corbijn puts it, another Jason Bourne? Definitely not ...

Let's start by saying that this film isn't the action blockbuster that Focus have made it out to be. Instead it's a slow, reflective piece that works almost like a serious Lost In Translation, which can only be a good thing right? Well, not really.

Clooney plays Jack, a man who right from the first shot of him sipping on a drink while his girlfriend puts her arms around him from behind, while he stares emotionless into the middle distance, looks dead inside. He's completely detached from the world and after getting found by his enemies (why they are after him in the first place we never find out) he has to leave to set up shop again in a small Italian village. Whilst he is there he makes friends with the local priest and falls in love with a local prostitute and soon wants out of the game. That's the whole film, apart from the opening action, a small chase scene halfway through and the end, that's all the action you're going to get. Boring? Well, yes and no.

What Corbijn has done here is taken Clooney's paranoia and brought us into it. Through the score, the shots, the look and the general silence (it feels like hardly a word is uttered throughout the film), we start questioning what's around the corner, if anyone can ever be trusted and a mere shadow makes us just as tense as Jack. The way this feeling of suspense effortlessly glides from character to the audience is a masterful stroke in itself, but with all the suspense in the world even the master himself Hitchcock knew you have to give the audience a pay off, and The American just doesn't do it enough. It might build things up, but the audience's confidence in Jack means that there's no situation we feel he cannot control and so the tension can only work to a certain degree. However, the constant turning of one's head and lack of trust is an important concept that you can imagine all these spy thriller heroes would have to go through. It looks lonely and exhausting and, as we know from the off, Jack is no hero either.

It's also interesting how it's called The American. His lack of trust and paranoia is something that could be said of the country's social mentality post 9/11, but also how he feels isolated outside of his natural habitat - as if America feels cut off from the rest of the world and how, in some ways, it is. I don't think it's just by chance that he deals arms and is ex-military either. I'd also argue that the whole world he's living in is his own Hell, which is even suggested by the priest at one point. There's a lot of talk of religion, of cleansing sins, of hope and despair and the ultimate trial of opening up to someone and falling in love. All the while he's making deals with the devil for monetary gain and has, in theory, sold his soul.

It's a film that is more about what's not being said than by what is. Little looks, turns of heads and the use of light indicate a director who knows exactly what he wants and the framing and cinematography in general is beautiful. Every shot is like a perfect picture and cannot be faulted, you can see why this man is one of the best photographers out there. However, I can't help but feel that this should have been an art-house film with perhaps an unknown in the lead. Not that there's anything wrong with Clooney, in fact all the acting in this is superb, but the expectation of this being a Clooney spy thriller means that it becomes a disappointment for a lot of people. It's a slow-paced, suggestive tale of one man trying to reach out to others and would have been better off without being touched by Hollywood. Had this have been advertised as a slow, emotive, indie art-house foreign flick (whatever that means anymore) I would have liked it more. As it is, it feels like a pretentious, yet beautiful, sequence of images that is more about scoring credibility for all involved rather than entertaining the audience. If people say they loved it, it's more likely because they feel they have to. It's a good, quiet, sombre film that jogs along and keeps you guessing, but essentially it was a bit boring.

Rating: 6/10