Bryan Fogel’s Breathless New Doc
The Row, the new documentary from Bryan Fogel, does for open-sea rowing what the Oscar-winning Free Solo did for unassisted rock climbing, offering an intense yet meditative glimpse into the extremes people push themselves to in hopes of a catharsis that might have instead been achieved from a rigorous course of therapy. Put a different way, watching The Row is an 87-minute cycle of responses that alternate between “Whoa, gnarly!” and “What reasonable person would ever do something like this?” rendered viscerally enough that it’s easy to get caught up in its questions about trauma, masculinity and family without dwelling on how often those questions either don’t get asked directly enough or have no satisfying answers. The Row The Bottom Line Breathlessly effective, even if it doesn’t always dig deep. Venue: Telluride Film FestivalDirector: Bryan Fogel 1 hour 27 minutes It’s a gripping and moving documentary, but despite its attempted philosophical and nautical depth, it doesn’t benefit from post-screening contemplation. Unlike its protagonist, who’s constantly bursting through the limitations of human endurance — Fogel’s thematically …
