Movie review: Against The Sun

The three men are bobbing along the biggest stretch of water on the planet with no food, no water, no first aid. They face marauding sharks and terrible storms, and though you know they will come out alive, you still want the man who let the team down swim to safety, willing the shark to go away; you still want the younger man to keep spouting poetry; and the third one to just keep going.

The interplay between the men is interesting, too. There is the expected initial shock, reproach and recrimination, and then a long period of settling in, where they learn how to collect water (yes, the stuff that comes out one end of the body is water too), how to fashion a hook to catch a fish larger than their raft (the fish looks plasticky-fake but still you are happy because it will keep the men alive for a while), and how to keep the faith when all seems dark.

And Lee’s Life Of Pi did almost the same thing with a boy and a Bengal tiger. Against The Sun takes no recourse to magical realism; the men are burnt, starved and delirious by the end of their ordeal. When they finally sight land, and stumble on to the sand, they have spent 34 days in the ocean. That’s called luck and sheer triumph of will.

shubhra.gupta@expressindia.com