Four stars. Rated PG, and needlessly, for mildly salty language
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.19.19
The only thing better than a captivating underdog drama is a captivating underdog documentary.
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| Although her capable and resourceful crew members handle their various tasks with skill, skipper Tracy Edwards (left) is equally involved with every aspect of the yacht she has dubbed Maiden. |
Director Alex Holmes’ Maiden is mesmerizing: an absorbing depiction of one person’s determination to triumph despite odds and obstacles that the word “overwhelming” cannot adequately convey. And — even more important — this is a thoroughly satisfying empowerment saga, which traces a young woman’s resolve to penetrate a rather unusual (but still insufferable) gender barrier.
Let it be said: Tracy Edwards is an extraordinary individual.
Seventeen yachts and 167 crew members participated in 1973’s debut Whitbread Round the World Race. This highly competitive event subsequently has taken place roughly every three years (and since 2001, with a change of sponsorship, has been known as the Volvo Ocean Race).
For more than a decade, women played almost no role: not as crew, and certainly not as skippers. Indeed, the very concept of a woman participating was greeted with sexist, dismissively jeering smirks that bordered on the superstitious: like sailors who regarded the killing of an albatross as bad luck.
At first blush — as the opening chapter of Holmes’ film makes clear — Edwards seems an unlikely champion to go up against the yachting world’s impregnable gender barrier. Unlike most who participate in the annual race, she didn’t grow up in a sailing family; she also had a troubled childhood, dropping out of school and running away at 16, in order to flee an antagonistic, alcoholic stepfather.
But she finds a new family, of sorts, when she joins a hard-partying tribe of boat crew gypsies, working as a cook and stewardess on private vessels and for-hire yachts that ferry tourists between island resorts. All these years later, a blaze of excitement illuminates Edwards’ gaze, as she thinks back to how quickly this new, exhilarating lifestyle became an epiphany moment.
Holmes and editor Katie Bryer blend intimate, on-camera recollections by Edwards, and other participants, with an impressively diverse assortment of archival footage (some of it obviously obtained under quite hazardous conditions, as the story proceeds). Holmes was blessed by the availability of so much video; it’s almost as if somebody knew, so many decades ago, that Edwards was destined to become a “chosen one.”
