I bring my apologies to anyone who might be offended about what I am to say, but nevertheless I think I should introduce my opinion.
First of all, you DO NOT promote a sport with a movie that involves pseudo-epic tragedy and stereotypical characters such as the ego-larger-than-brain athlete and the gimme-dat-record-at-all-costs-or-die-trying trainer. Out of all sports known to man, freediving is perhaps the least approving of ultra-competitive approach. I mean, the way the poor girl worked out in the movie's trailer reminded me of the approach of the stereotypical couch potato weekend warrior whose preferred form of exercise is spinning the pedals at 120 miles per hour for half a minute, then collapsing of a heart attack. Too many sporting movies make the same mistake: they mention iron will, discipline and guts as the only components that distinguish a world champion from an ordinary person, totally forfeiting one of the most important factors: Never overstressing oneself for a breakthrough, knowing one's limits and only increasing them slowly but surely and safely. This approach to depiction of sports has two major consequences, neither of them beneficial: first, it causes the general public to treat athletes as superhumans, posessing qualities unattainable by any ordinary person, which is, for the most part, untrue. Second, it causes those who don't become discouraged by the first part to train recklessly and irresponsibly, believing this is the only way to achieve progress, "because that's what Rocky did".
What complicates the problem even more is that very few athletes complain about the fallacity of the way they are represented, mainly because the current approach makes many a world champion revered and idolized, which constitutes an ego boost of the kind that very few people are able to reject.
Ironically, while freedivers tend to make an exception from this rule, the ever-increasing popularity of the sport still has the downside of the media attempting to instill false sportmanship romanticism in the general public.
Faster. Higher. Deeper. While the record-pursuing rush and competitive anger in minor, controlled doses can indeed become a powerful incentive to win, particularly in combative sports, freediving is a sport where success demands from the sportsman to be driven not by a desire to win, but by an individual, personal motivation: a philosophical or ecological statement, a desire to experience the marvel of the Big Blue unhindered, or simply a wish to understand oneself better. This is what Luc "Big Badda Boom" Besson actually understood and what the authors of "The Freediver" seem to refuse to acknowledge. It is a well-known fact that becoming a diver was one of Besson's childhood's dreams. However, a ruptured ear drum made him unable to dive for life, and this is how an idea of the tribute to his dreams was born.
You might say that "The Big Blue" and "The Freediver" share the same kind of exaggerated representation of the sport. But I am not willing to forgive the authors of the current movie the same way I forgave Besson. Reason? Freediving has changed over the years. During Mayol's days, it was an unbelievable feat, a circus attraction, a leap of faith for the brave. Right now, it is a sport that rapidly gains public popularity, has numerous research projects dedicated to it and numerous competing official organisations endorsing its rules. And this is why I refuse to acknowledge "The Freediver" as a mean to raise POSITIVE public awareness of the sport.
To top it all, this movie has quite a perverse relationship with facts. In 1999, a Greek student by the name of Danai Varveri indeed accomplished an unassisted dive to 35 meters. Ironically enough, no one ever gave a damn. The dive was promoted as a world record in a new (unapproved) category, while, as far as I know, there were better performances in constant weight without fins beforehand. Hence, the dive did not exactly qualify as a world record, and, with all due respect to her, the only thing Ms. Varveri had managed to accomplish was to make a bold ecological and fashion statement (It's cold down there, mind you. Read Yasemin's account on her latest record to get a grip on why "natural apnea" is a hopeless category).
This is where it starts to get ugly. Since facts didn't attract sponsors, BIOS decided to go for drama. That means love, stereotypical characters and fatalities. Now, if one deviates from real life by such a large degree, one should at least rename the main character and tell that all similarity, as they always write in the disclaimer, is strictly coincidental. Instead, we get more real-life puns, such as a competing diver named Maggie (Heaney-Grier?).
Since the movie's plot has apparently nothing to do with the real life Danai Varveri, then:
If you want a drama, why not fictionalize it?
If you want a realistic drama, why not discuss a real case of freediver's death or injury (As Cameron supposedly did)?
If you want a promotion movie, why not make this a documentary about Hannah Stacey, who was the stunt freediver and set two records during the production of the movie?
Fishy.
-Levi.
