Editor’s note: The following is a review from a Critical Writing and Reviewing student at the University of Missouri.
Martin Strel, the four-time world record holder in endurance swimming, is standing on a street corner in California, all 200-plus pounds of Slovenian glory bulging out over a straining Speedo. He tells passers by about his next endeavor, swimming the entire Amazon River, and he’s met with crazy stares and disbelief. But Martin doesn’t seem to notice. He’s done this twice before – once down the Yangtze and again down the Mississippi – so why not the Amazon next? To him it only seems natural. To us, he’s crazy. But it’s clear from the start that Martin isn’t ordinary…even if he doesn’t seem to recognize it.
We get to know Martin in his homeland of Slovenia, where he basks in his national celebrity status. He makes his own rules; he parks his car wherever he pleases, enjoys a free lifetime membership to Atlantis, Europe’s largest waterpark – complete with psychedelic waterslide – and is known for his multitasking, something of a national pastime for Slovenians Martin’s son says, like, for instance, drinking and driving. At one point we see Martin learning English via cassette tape, practicing his breathing exercises and drinking a beer…all while driving 100 miles per hour down the highway. And when he’s not teaching flamenco guitar lessons or eating horseburgers with his son, he’s swimming 20 kilometers a day and obsessing over his fast-approaching adventure, even in his dreams.
When he’s downing a bottle of whiskey mid-swim, it’s clear to us he’s no Lance Armstrong or Michael Phelps. But he’s passionate, albeit eccentric. It’s this slightly buzzed, only half translated yet confident charisma that makes him lovable and laughable and one of the best protagonists to uninhibitedly dominate a film in a long time. And the best part about it is that he has no idea how great he is.
Well…yes, actually, he does. He just doesn’t realize how comical that is.
But it’s right about here, at the start of the Amazon swim, that the laughs bring with them a new depth. The swim turns out to be far more difficult than Martin had us believing at the start. Yes, we knew there would be piranhas and alligators and that the crew would be carrying guns and machetes, just in case. We didn’t know that the river was in flood stage until Martin was fighting eddies and deadly whirlpools just to stay afloat. And we didn’t take into account the parasites, the sunburn, driftwood or foggy conditions. It isn’t until day nine, when Martin is suffering from second-degree burns on his face and has already lost 12 pounds, that we start to comprehend the realness of what he’s doing and question the feasibility of his goal. Will he make it? And what kind of sad state will he be in if he does?
Slowly, we see Martin, and most of his crew, deteriorate. Martin battles his high blood pressure, a parasite infection in his brain, hallucinations and his own sanity. Living on the river turns out to be, in some ways, more difficult mentally than physically. Martin’s navigator, Matt, a fisherman from Wisconsin, after three sleepless days starts rambling nonsense – “[Martin’s] the last superhero in the world!” – to anything with ears, and Martin, floating belly-up in a drunken/sleep-deprived/hallucinatory stupor, admits to us, “Now I’m close over into fourth dimension.” None of this surprises Martin’s son. This happens every trip.
Martin’s son is our guide as narrator through what he calls the strangest and worst 70 days of his life. He helps us understand why it is that his father is gambling with his life in the world’s longest, most treacherous rivers. In the Yangtze, when Martin swam through trash and alongside dead bodies, he says he did it to promote awareness about the world’s polluted rivers. His son sees three motivations in the Amazon: (1) to protect the rainforest, although no one knows what the hell he means by that, (2) to wage a personal battle on the memory of an abusive childhood, and (3) to prove validity in the idea that anyone can achieve impossible dreams.
By its end, Big River Man shares an intimacy with its audience that leaves us feeling like we just compared battle scars over copious bottles of wine with old friends. Martin and his crew have a natural presence that allows their true story to resonate with us and for their personalities to leave a lasting, certainly singular impression.
by Kelli White
Recent Comments