💥 Thriller 🛌 Academy of Evil 🚣🏻‍♂️ Rowing (2021)

"You gotta relax." "Oh, my god. You know, I am so sick and tired of everyone in my life telling me to relax. Okay? Relaxing should be a privilege, not a fucking standard." "You think I don't see you? You're self-immolating on a loop."

The Novice is a fairly accurate depiction of what it’s like to show up and join a boat of somewhat experienced rowers with no prior experience, if you are someone with intense personal performance standards that are used to cover up lifelong psychological damage.

This is a realistic film. It might be a good watch before you go see the new The Boys in the Boat. The amount of mental pressure in the sport is correctly depicted, and with a different mentality the acts she performs in training and level of obsession could have been harnessed safely. The people who do this seriously do train six hours a day or more, it’s all rigorously periodized and planned, the amount of technical work can be overwhelming, and when you’re on the water there is a lot of pleasure but, when you’re first starting, also a crazy amount of pressure not to mess up the whole boat.

The difference between the self-destructive obsession Isabelle Fuhrman’s Alex Dall shows and the normal self-competitive and motivated rower is not very noticeable in her rowing behavior. She trains at the intense end of normal. It’s in details of her personality that the problem becomes obvious: she is fighting through something dark in herself and her life, and when she discovers rowing it becomes the psychological battlefield, but she was always going to have a battle to fight with herself, and if it weren’t this, it would have to be something else. To me, this is a very familiar psychological profile and it’s easy to empathize with. The way she’s training is pushing some wound care limits, but it’s otherwise safe. The damage she brings is poisoning her.

Spoilers in blockquote; skip as needed

My favorite part was her breakdown, when she is discussing how everyone always tells her to calm down and she is totally losing it about others trying to control her state of mind. She can’t calm and she can’t be easy on herself; her psychology at that point makes it impossible. Others telling her to take care and be easy feels hurtful because it’s asking her to do something she thinks she can’t and shouldn’t.She would if it were possible, but it’s not possible for her, and why this is the case is a fascinating character question. The way she is crying at the end of the bathroom conversation was painful to watch, because it’s clear she’s used to people having to step out of her life because watching her self-treatment hurts them, but she’s not able to fix it.This is very real, so as sad as it is, I enjoyed seeing it depicted. The conversation she has in the pool hall is also fascinating, because it gives the backstory for this character trait a bit, and we learn some older causes of her extreme overwork habit. It’s also the only conversation the viewer sees her fully engaged in, and when she is being socially herself, the excess pressure behind everything she says is obvious.As for making the first boat and the scholarship, in the end, her friend is right. She does not need to be in the first boat her first year. Her friend does or she goes back to an impossible domestic life. But Alex’s personality makes it difficult to understand others or see beyond her self-flagellating and one can see the effect on her relationships and team cohesion.The details of physical harm are not invented either. People do get staph infections and, worst case, blood poisoning from poor wound care and callus / hand maintenance. Bleeding everywhere is absolutely default at some point when you start. Her hands, until the very end, are basic novice hands. The vomiting is pretty normal. Nearly passing out at the end of an erg piece or a race is where you are expected to be. Rowing is mentally very different from many sports. It requires you to drain as much power as is correct while requiring precise form performed in perfect timing with others in your boat so that it translates to stability and boat speed. You feel like you’re together with a group, but in the end, you’re also alone with your performance. It’s also harder to see clearly when your performance is helping the group, since in an eight or four it’s masked somewhat, but it is very clear to you and everyone else when you’re dragging, and this can drive a rower crazy. It’s a sport for perfectionists to destroy themselves with if not careful.The depiction of crabbing, and how she beat herself up for it, is an example of this. Her coach knows the boat had form problems, but she’s the one whose blade caught, so everyone is going to blame her and she is going to blame herself.The part where she lies about having rowed in a single to get out on the water over break is so identifiable, and her first efforts to be balanced are absolutely hilarious.

The Novice really gets being a novice rower right. Everything that happens is something that one can identify with. And the film is very well done, the pacing is great, and the side plots and character development are good too. Certainly the music and sound design is solid, and it’s filmed cleverly. I have some small quibbles: why do we keep seeing a crab? Is this really necessary? And the raven has to crow every single minute because the team is named after ravens? But that’s about the extent of what bothered me.

Beside that, it felt like going out on the water with friends, and whenever I’m not near a river, I miss that, so, absolute self-destructive spiral aside, this was a fun watch for me. The rest is realistic and sad.

If you feel like watching a Whiplash/Black Swan-style indie thriller with strong acting and a wonderful lead performance, or if you row, this is going to be a great watch for you.

Recommended.

Some Lists:

💥 Thriller | 🚣🏻‍♂️ Rowing
🛌 Academy of Evil
2️⃣ 2020s Ranked | 📆 2021
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates
📽️ Viewing Next 🗂️ Index of Lists

Looking for something different? Consider:

Piranha 3D | Ready or Not | Past Lives | Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person | Society of the Snow | [REC] | Monster | Anatomy of a Fall | Oppenheimer | Red Rooms | The Lighthouse | Beyond Utopia |Four Daughters | Naga | When Evil Lurks | Eileen | How to Have Sex | Journey to the West | Saltburn | 20 Days in Mariupol | The Holdovers | Leave the World Behind | May December | Dream Scenario | In My Mother's Skin | Tin and Tina