Dead Calm (film)

Dead Calm is a 1989 Australian psychological thriller film directed by Phillip Noyce, produced by George Miller, and starring Sam Neill, Nicole Kidman and Billy Zane. The screenplay by Terry Hayes was based on the 1963 novel of the same name by Charles Williams.

Filmed around the Great Barrier Reef, the plot focuses on a married couple, who, after tragically losing their son, are spending some time isolated at sea, when they come across a stranger who has abandoned a sinking ship.

Notably, the movie is the first successful film adaptation of the novel, after Orson Welles worked for a number of years to complete his own film based on it titled The Deep, though it ultimately went unreleased and uncompleted.

Dead Calm was generally well received, with critics praising Neill, Kidman, and Zane's performances and the oceanic cinematography. It was nominated in eight categories at the 1989 Australian Film Institute Awards, including Best Film, and won four. Modern retrospective analyses have been favorable, with The New York Times naming it one of the 1000 best films ever made.<ref name=":0" />

Plot

Rae Ingram is involved in a car crash which results in the death of her young son. Her older husband, Royal Australian Navy officer Captain John Ingram, suggests that they head out for a vacation alone on their yacht, the Saracen. In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, they encounter a drifting schooner that seems to be taking on water. A man rows a dinghy over to the Saracen for help. He introduces himself as Hughie Warriner and tells them the schooner is sinking and that the other passengers have all died of food poisoning.

John rows to the schooner, the Orpheus. Inside, John discovers the mutilated corpses of the other passengers and video footage indicating that Hughie may have murdered them. On the Saracen, Hughie awakens, knocks out Rae, and sails it away.

Left behind, John attempts to keep the Orpheus from sinking and catch up with the Saracen. Rae awakens, and John reaches her on the radio, but water damage makes him unable to reply except through clicks on the radio receiver to signal yes or no to her questions. Hughie tries to convince Rae to be friends with him. Rae accepts, attempting to earn his trust. John tells her that the Orpheus is too far gone and will sink within hours.

To save John, Rae plays along with Hughie's overtures long enough to get to the shotgun on the deck. She and Hughie start to kiss and undress, before Rae stalls for time by saying that she has to go to the bathroom. She runs onto the deck to assemble the shotgun, but her dog Ben follows her and starts barking, causing Hughie to investigate. In a panic, Rae leaves the gun behind. She returns to the bedroom, where Hughie coerces her into sex.

Afterward, Rae fixes some lemonade spiked with a heavy dose of her prescription sedatives and tricks Hughie into drinking it. Claiming she is going to get dressed, Rae returns for the shotgun, but Hughie discovers her and they grapple for the gun as a storm approaches. Hughie gains control of the shotgun, but the effects of the sedative cause him to aim poorly and shoot out the Saracen's radio. Rae finds a harpoon launcher and locks herself in the bedroom. Hughie starts forcing the bedroom door and Rae fires harpoons through it, but hits and kills Ben, who was on the other side. Hughie bursts out of hiding to strangle her, but passes out from the drugs. Rae ties him up and sails back to rescue John. Hughie regains consciousness, cuts himself loose and comes after Rae, who shoots him in the shoulder with a harpoon and knocks him unconscious again. She sets him adrift in the yacht's life raft.

The damage and the storm have caused the Orpheus to fill almost completely with water, leaving John locked in the hold and struggling to breathe through a pipe. He finally breaks free after kicking through the hull and sets the wrecked Orpheus on fire so Rae can find his location. At dusk, Rae notices the flames and eventually finds John on a piece of floating debris. She pulls him back on board the Saracen, and they come upon the floating life raft, which Rae incinerates with a flare.

The next day, John washes Rae's hair and prepares breakfast for her. While he is below decks, a gravely injured Hughie appears and begins to strangle her. While Rae struggles against him, John shoots Hughie in the mouth with a flare, killing him. Rae and John embrace as they sail away, leaving Hughie's body behind.

Cast

• Nicole Kidman as Rae Ingram
• Sam Neill as John Ingram
• Billy Zane as Hughie Warriner
• Rod Mullinar as Russell Bellows
• Joshua Tilden as Danny
• George Shevtsov as Doctor
• Michael Long as Specialist Doctor
• Lisa Collins as 'Orpheus' Cruise Girl
• Paula Hudson-Brinkley as 'Orpheus' Cruise Girl
• Sharon Cook as 'Orpheus' Cruise Girl
• Malinda Rutter as 'Orpheus' Cruise Girl
• Benji as Dog (as Benji U.D. A.D.)
• John Simmit as Dog Owner (uncredited)

Unfinished previous adaptation

Template:Main The film is based on the novel Dead Calm by American author Charles Williams. Orson Welles had optioned the film rights in the mid-1960's. Under the title The Deep, Welles shot the film between 1966 and 1969 off the coast of Yugoslavia. The prospective film starred Laurence Harvey as Hughie, Michael Bryant as Ingram, Oja Kodar as Rae, and Welles himself played Russ Bellowes. Jeanne Moreau played Hughie's wife Ruth, a character present in the original novel but cut out of Noyce's film.

Welles' production was plagued by financial and technical problems, and effectively halted at the end of 1969. Principal photography remained incomplete, and Laurence Harvey's death in 1973 effectively ended any hope of completing the film.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The original film negative is considered lost, though two workprints survive, and footage from the film has been displayed since.

Production

Producer Tony Bill had tried to buy the rights from Welles but was never successful. He mentioned this to Phil Noyce, giving him a copy of the book in 1984. Noyce enjoyed the book and showed it to George Miller and Terry Hayes, who were enthusiastic. Miller managed to persuade Oja Kodar, Welles's companion, who controlled the rights to the novel, to sell the book to Kennedy Miller.<ref name="stratton2">David Stratton, The Avocado Plantation: Boom and Bust in the Australian Film Industry, Pan MacMillan, 1990 p263–265</ref><ref name="phil">Brian McFarlane, "Phil Noyce: Dead Calm", Cinema Papers, May 1989 p6–11</ref>

The book features several other main characters (including Hughie's wife and survivors John finds on the Orpheus), and presented Hughie as a nominally asexual manchild.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> It also goes into further detail about what caused Hughie's psychotic break.

Filming

The film was shot over a 6-month span in Queensland's Whitsunday Islands beginning in May 1987. George Miller directed some sequences himself, including one where Sam Neill's character is tormented in the boat by a shark. This scene ended up being dropped from the final film.

The sequence in which John kills Hughie with a flare was filmed at the request of Warner Bros seven months after principal photography finished. As written, the film originally ended with Rae setting Hughie adrift on a life raft to ostensibly die at sea; the studio was unhappy with this ambiguity and wanted a definite fate for the film's antagonist.<ref name="stratton2" />

Sam Neill met his future wife Noriko Watanabe during filming.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Music

The synthesizer-driven film score was composed and performed by New Zealand musician Graeme Revell, of the industrial group SPK. Dead Calm was Revell's first ever film score, and earned him an AFI Award for Best Original Music Score.

Reception

Box office

Dead Calm grossed $2,444,407 at the box office in Australia,<ref name="autogeneratedvic"/> which is equivalent to $4,253,268 in 2009 dollars. It grossed $7,825,009 in the U.S.<ref name="Mojo" />

Critical reception

Dead Calm has an 84% "fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes based on 31 reviews, with a rating of 7.5/10. The site's consensus states that "Nicole Kidman's coiled intensity and muscular direction by Phillip Noyce give this nautical thriller a disquieting sense of dread".<ref>Template:Cite web.</ref> On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 70 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

According to David Stratton of Variety, "throughout the film, Nicole Kidman is excellent" and "she gives the character of Rae real tenacity and energy" and "though not always entirely credible" the picture "is a nail-biting suspense pic, handsomely produced and inventively directed."<ref name="Variety">Template:Cite magazine</ref> Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote that the film "generates genuine tension."<ref>Dead Calm Chicago Sun-Times. 7 April 1989</ref> Desson Howe of The Washington Post praised the film's creators: "Noyce's direction moves impressively from sensual tenderness (between husband and wife) to edge-of-the-seat horror. With accomplished editing by Richard Francis-Bruce and scoring by Graeme Revell, he finds lurking dangers in quiet, peaceful waters."<ref name="Howe">Howe, Desson. 'Dead Calm' The Washington Post (7 April 1989)</ref>

On the other hand, Caryn James of The New York Times felt that the film was "an unsettling hybrid of escapist suspense and the kind of pure trash that depends on dead babies and murdered dogs for effect," and that Dead Calm "becomes disturbing for all the wrong reasons."<ref name="James">James, Caryn. "Critics' Pick: Reviews/Film; A Psychological Drama Of Nightmares and Death", The New York Times (7 April 1989).</ref> A number of critics faulted the film's ending as being over-the-top, with the PostTemplate:'s Howe writing, "... while it's afloat, 'Dead Calm' is a majestic horror cruise. ... For much of the movie, you're enthralled. By the end, you're laughing."<ref name="Howe" />

The acting was generally considered excellent, with Zane being cited for injecting "unforgettable humanity and evil puckishness into his role"<ref name="Howe" /> and being "suitably manic and evil." And while Rita Kempley of The Washington Post wrote "what's most fascinating about it is Rae's place in the pantheon of heroines, an Amazon for the '90s,"<ref>Kempley, Rita. "'Dead Calm'," The Washington Post (7 April 1989).</ref> the Times' James called Kidman's character "tough but stupid."<ref name="James" />

The film is listed on The New York Times Top 1000 Movies list,<ref name=":0">Top 1000 Movies List The New York Times.</ref> derived from editor Peter M. Nichols' The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made (St. Martin's Griffin, 2004). The film was partly the inspiration for 1993 Hindi-language film Darr.<ref>Template:Cite webTemplate:Cbignore</ref>

Awards and nominations

Award	Year	Category	Nominee(s)	Result
Australian Film Institute Awards	1989	Best Film	George Miller	Template:Nom
		Best Direction	Phillip Noyce	Template:Nom
		Best Screenplay, Adapted	Terry Hayes	Template:Nom
		Best Original Music Score	Graeme Revell	Template:Won
		Best Cinematography	Dean Semler	Template:Won
		Best Editing	Richard Francis-Bruce	Template:Won
		Best Sound	Ben Osmo, Lee Smith, Roger Savage	Template:Won
		Best Production Design	Graham Grace Walker	Template:Nom
Chicago Film Critics Association Award	1990	Most Promising Actor	Billy Zane	Template:Nom
Motion Picture Sound Editors Award	1990	Best Sound Editing - Foreign Feature	Ben Osmo, Lee Smith, Roger Savage	Template:Won
Saturn Award	1991	Best Actress	Nicole Kidman	Template:Nom

See also

• The Deep (unfinished film)
• Cinema of Australia

External links

• Template:IMDb title
• Template:TCMDb title
• Dead Calm at Oz Movies
• Template:Rotten-tomatoes
• Dead Calm at the National Film and Sound Archive