TIFF 2012 Review: The Deep

Based on a true story from 1984, The Deep follows Gulli, a simple crewmember on a fishing trawler, who joins his crewmates on a routine pre-dawn sojourn to sea. This is about the first half hour of the picture, but Gulli and his fellow fishermen are never writ as anything other than the most basic characters – not even “types,” which would be giving the screenwriting too much credit. “Objects in frame” would be a closer description. Aside from the fact that one of them is a father and one of them is a cook and one of them is the captain and one of them is Gulli, we know nothing about any of them, and merely observe them quietly as they go about their mundane work.

The second half hour of the picture is occupied by the sinking of the fishing boat, which becomes snagged on a reef and pulls itself under in The Deep’s centerpiece, electrifying sequence. Gulli and two others find themselves marooned on the ship’s overturned keel in frigid water and frigid air in the middle of the night; they determine that the only option, scarce as its chance of success may be, is to swim for shore. Within moments of leaving the boat, Gulli is the sole survivor of the freezing North Atlantic, but Gulli does – improbably – swim all the way to shore, in a pitched personal battle against sea, sky, and volcanic rock that would do Herman Melville proud. In a simple but overwhelming powers-of-ten shot, Kormákur’s camera pulls back from Gulli swimming through the frigid blackness, isolating him in frame against a vast, dark nothingness.

The third and final half-hour, though, lugubriously essays the “how” of Gulli’s survival, as various skeptics study him in ever-increasingly complex scientific tests. “How can you study a miracle?” Gulli’s mother asks honestly, but if we’re meant to assume a larger philosophical point here, The Deep is coy about it. Really, the film only comes across as a straight-ahead recreation of a strange event and how it happened; it closes with footage of the real Gulli in 1984, contemplating his ordeal. But the film itself does not probe the circumstances of Gulli’s survival with any technical insight or spiritual insight into what it all means.

Impressively, Kormákur filmed everything practically, creating stunning images of the trawler fighting its way through the ocean, and even more stunning images of the sheer blackness of Icelandic night when lost beyond civilization. The lengthy sequence of Gulli arriving at shore only to find himself confronted with impassable, razor-sharp volcanic rock will stay with me for a while. I wish more of The Deep could do so.