The new movie "Young Woman and the Sea" is another great historical movie about an important person and event that most people have never heard about.
Trudy Ederle was the first woman to swim across the English Channel, on August 6, 1926 - an extreme athletic achievement that over the last 100 years has killed 10 people. The distance between France and England is 21 miles, with an ocean that has severe waves, jellyfish, sharks, and in some areas unexploded mines from previous wars that were never removed. There are ocean shallows that are near the England coast where boats cannot follow the swimmer and in the case of this story, the swimmer can get lost very easily and drown. This dangerous problem of the ocean shallows near the coast of England provides an impressive emotional ending to this very good story.
This film stars Daisy Ridley as Trudy and follows her very unlikely life as the daughter of a butcher from Manhattan. Trudy's interest in swimming came after a horrific boat accident in New York Harbor that burned and sank. 847 people died, most of them because they never learned how to swim. As Trudy's interest in swimming grew she had to endure years of resistance from her father, and chauvinism because she was a female who wanted to swim in competition.
At age 19, in the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, Ederle won a gold medal as one of the members of 4x100 meter freestyle relay. Soon after she announced to her family that she wanted to swim the English Channel and unfortunately her coach for her first attempt sabotaged her swim, by giving her tea that made her sleep. Why he was not prosecuted for this, was never explained in this movie.
At the end of this film, it was mentioned - in the history of ticker tape parades in New York City, the one thrown for Ederle in 1926 still stands as the largest in history after she swam the English Channel.
Overall the acting in this film was outstanding, and like the recent "Nyad" starring Annette Benning - anyone seeing this movie has to admire what it took these actors to swim in the ocean to film these two impressive real-life stories.
The Rotten Tomatoes rating for this film is a high 84% with my rating 90% and a solid recommendation.
No comments:
Post a Comment