STAR covers Adrift’s red-carpet preem

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine STAR was invited to the star-studded premiere of Hollywood superstar Shailene Woodley’s current film Adrift held at the LA Live in downtown Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago.

Shailene and her co-star, English actor Sam Claflin, graced the blue carpet together with the filmmakers and author Tami Oldham Ashcraft, whose book Red Sky in Mourning: The True Story of a Woman’s Courage and Survival at Sea served as the basis of the film.

The carpet was noticeably not “red” — it was blue like the bluest ocean — in honor of the inspiring and remarkable true story of courage and survival at sea of a young couple that gets stranded in the middle of the Pacific Ocean during a hurricane and must find their way to Hawaii with a damaged ship, no radio and no help coming their way.

Set in 1983, Adrift tells the true story of two experienced sailors, Tami Oldham (played by Shailene) and Richard Sharp (Sam), who embarked on a 4,000-mile delivery passage of a 44-foot yacht from Tahiti to San Diego only to find themselves sailing directly into the path of the deadly hurricane Raymond. The violent storm serves as the beginning of their remarkable story. Tami and Richard survive the storm but their boat gets badly damaged and Richard gravely injured. Tami needs to gather all her strength and willpower to get her and Richard to safety as soon as possible before the sea and elements can claim them. This thrilling and moving film opened in US theaters on June 1 and came in third in the competitive summer box office behind Solo: A Star Wars Story and Deadpool 2.

Helping to bring the story to the screen is Oscar-nominated composer Volker Bertelmann, whose distinct piano compositions from the tearjerker Lion caught the attention of Baltasar Kormasur, the director of the movie.

Writers Jordan and Aaron Kandell

“Lion was the score that Baltasar heard before so he was asking to do some of the subtle piano things in there,” Volker told this writer on the carpet. He added that the particular challenge to him in creating the melody for Adrift was how to combine the tender love story between Tami and Richard and their harrowing experience being lost and trying to survive at sea.

“You have a love affair that needs a certain sensitivity and at the same time you have a drama that plays outside, on the sea, that has a lot of rawness, a lot of loud sea noise finding into the melody or themes that are working in terms of the love and the sensitivity and having the music that describes the rage, the loneliness on sea,” he said.

When this writer chatted with Baltasar, he echoed what Volker said and emphasized that the two storylines that define Tami’s memoir proved to be the biggest challenge to him as the director of the film.

“This is a love story and a survival story and you want them to be integrated in an organic way and sit well together,” he remarked.

Baltasar is not new to the rigorous demands of a real-life survival story. He previously directed the film Everest, based on the headline-making 1996 disaster in Mount Everest involving a group of climbers. It starred Jake Gyllenhaal and Keira Knightley.

When he was handed the project two years ago, he found himself engrossed with the story. “I was surprised because I haven’t seen any survival story with women in the lead — the hero is a woman!” he said recalling his reaction.

Composer Volker Bertelmann

The twin writers Jordan and Aaron Kandell, who adapted Tami’s book together with David Branson Smith, described the film as an “unbelievable, true and of the most incredible survival stories of all time that also had this incredible, sweeping ‘falling-in-love’ in paradise love story which we knew we can take our moms to this film, we can take our wives to this film.”

To them, the challenge was how to balance the two extreme aspects of Tami’s book. “Hopefully, the audience will see it and see it that it is, in equal measures, a survival and a love story,” they added.

The movie is a faithful adaptation of Tami’s best-selling book but there are other elements in the film that were added as they were writing the screenplay in consultation with Tami. “We spent time to really be with Tami and have her involved in every stage from the script through production to make sure that we were telling her story and having her voice take center stage.”

“Our goal was to tell Tami’s story as best we could, as accurate and as authentically as we could,” they said. “And it’s such a primal story, it’s so emotional that it was trying to convey it with as much truth and integrity and power as we could.”

The adaptation of the story from the book to film was set in motion five years ago, during a different time, before women and the #MeToo movement took center stage in Hollywood. Adrift celebrates the remarkable courage of one woman and the timing of its release couldn’t be timelier.

“It’s a happy groundswell, the ocean rises and swells and it’s a happy coincidence that a movie that we really wanted to tell because it was about a strong and empowered female who feels that there’s a horizon that’s calling to her, that she can sail for, even if it seems that you are going to cross an ocean and she’s going to do it. She is going to be skilled and talented and brave enough to do that and that was really empowering for us and Tami is such an incredible woman in real life. We need more of these stories and we feel fortunate and honored she allowed us to tell hers,” the brothers said.

Baltasar added, “I love the idea that in this story we are actually celebrating a real hero. We are not changing an old franchise from a man to a woman just to be politically correct, it’s actually shedding a light on a story of a woman who is a real hero.”

(Soon: The second part of this story with interviews with Tami, Shailene and Sam.)

Released by Viva International Pictures, Adrift opens nationwide on June 27.