Language: English with Hindi audio option Cast: Nathalie Issa, Manal Issa, Ahmed Malek, Matthias Schweighofer, James Krishna Floyd, Ali Suliman, Kinda Alloush, Elmi Rashid Elmi Director: Sally El Hosaini In 2015, sisters Yusra and Sara Mardini flee civil war-torn Syria ravaged by bomb scares and widespread political unrest. They manage to reach Turkey and strike a deal with touts to be smuggled to the Greek island of Lesbos by sea with other refugees. The plan goes wrong when their overcrowded inflatable dinghy breaks down in the middle of the sea. The sisters then brave the odds and swim to the coast, and in the process save lives of their fellow refugees. More incredibly, Yusra realises her Olympics dream as a swimmer the very next year, representing the Refugee Olympics Team at the Rio games of 2016. She would go to take part in the Tokyo Olympics four years later, too, and be nominated a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador. Sally El Hosaini’s film is based on the true story of the Mardini sisters, it’s the stuff that uplifting cinema is made of. Tales of resilience and courage marking the triumph of the human spirit never cease to awe, amaze and inspire. Served with the right dose of drama, such cinematic efforts find a ready audience, too. Given the film’s storyline, El Hosaini and co-writer Jack Thorne get ample scope to check the right boxes of social message. As Yusra and Sara’s real-life adventure unfolds, the screenplay gives voice to the abandoned and the marginalised. Focus is trained on the perils that refugees face, and the despair that violence of war brings in its wake (in a highlight scene, after the sisters and their fellow refugees manage to reach the coast, they find numerous life jackets strewn all around. They suddenly realise the new struggle they now face, after having survived the rough seas: Thousands of refugees have already arrived before them or are on the way just like them, with the same plans as theirs). El Hosaini manages to mix many such sordid truths without getting too graphic in her depiction of the brutalities of war or the trauma of refugees, to set up a young adult-friendly viewing experience. Makers of films based on underdogs achieving sporting success strive to a meet a couple of primary demands. First, it is important to strike the right balance between the sporting drama and the hardships that the protagonists face, without unduly stretching the storytelling process in order to accommodate both. Secondly, over the years the underdog life story as a genre would seem to have exhausted almost all stories there are to narrate, in terms of emotion and melodrama. It has become important for filmmakers exploring the genre to discover deeper contexts beyond obvious formulae that serve entertainment. El Hosaini’s film, set against the volatile backdrop of Middle East turbulence and the unending refugee crisis, had readymade material at hand to dive deep. Inspiring as Yusra and Sara’s story is, and bursting with the spirit of hope all along, El Hosaini’s cinematic interpretation shows no ambition of scaling the next level. You also begin to sense soon enough the storytelling is taking much more runtime than it ought to while narrating the saga of the Mardini sisters. At around 134 minutes, the film would appear stretched, especially in the second half, after a superb initial hour highlighted by the escape drama of the sisters. El Hosaini, though, is poignant in her portrayal of the travails that refugees face. You feel sad for the homeless bunch as they fall prey to cheats who swindle them of their last monetary resources. Such slices of life, however, are common to every refugee film. Moments as these amply serve as a grim reminder of the plight that the war-ravaged face all over the world and add to the film’s drama and emotional quotient, but these tracks don’t give the film any fresh perspective on the subject. The film shows no interest in exploring the powerful themes at hand. It is almost as if El Hosaini and co-writer Thorne were satisfied using Yusra and Sara’s story to create a mainstream entertainer and little else. It works fine while regaling, but it bars the film from being truly remarkable. In fact, so concerned is El Hosaini with capturing the suspense drama in Yusra and Sara’s life that she overlooks the necessity of fleshing out the identities of the sisters as individuals beyond heroes of her script. Flat characterisation, in fact, affects the entire cast but despite the limitation most prop actors are authentic in their portrayal of roles. El Hosaini sure has scored with her choice of actors playing the Mardini sisters. She has zeroed in on real-life sisters Nathalie and Manal Issa to portray Yusra and Sara. French-Lebanese actress Manal Issa is already a known name. She combines well with newcomer Nathalie to bring alive the Mardini sisters on screen. The film has been shot on actual locations, captured impressively through Christopher Ross’ cinematography. There is a gritty quality about the frames that is effective especially while recreating the dangers that the sisters and their fellow refugees go through while surviving their ordeal at sea. The editing (Iain Kitching) could have been tighter, especially in the second half when sluggishness creeps into the storytelling. It is almost as if after a gripping first half, El Hosaini wasn’t sure about how to sustain the intrigue inherent in the tale of these sisters, so she packs the narrative with commercial storytelling devices. Notable among the film’s mainstream vibes is Steven Price’s score. The film’s soundtrack uses songs featuring top Arab pop stars including the Tunisian singer avant-garde singer Emel, the Palestinian-Jordanian electronica group 47Soul, and the Palestinian hip-hop band DAM. This is the sort of cinema one easily falls in love with, given the astonishing story of valour and optimism it brings to the screen, never missing out on the feel-good vibes. For El Hosaini and Thorne that fact should have been a tremendous advantage, and prompted them to push the generic envelope on the refugee drama beyond the larger-than-life melodrama they set up. The Swimmers could have been so much more. Rating: * * * and 1/2 (three and a half stars out of five) The Swimmers is streaming on Netflix
Vinayak Chakravorty is a critic, columnist and film journalist based in Delhi-NCR. Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.