The Girl Who Wanted to Be the Best: A Review of "The Novice"
A sports drama about unattainable perfection.
Alex (Isabelle Fuhrman) is a college freshman who, despite a full scholarship, cannot relax and strives to achieve her best in everything to the detriment of her psychological state. Perfectionism leads the girl to the university rowing team, where she needs to achieve unprecedented results in a short period of time in order to once again become the first.
Isabelle Fuhrman's character is the direct heiress to the graceful ballerina Nina ("Black Swan") and the determined drummer Andrew ("Obsession"). The roll call is no coincidence: debutante director Lauren Hadaway was the sound engineer on Damien Chazelle's film and apparently decided to continue the masters' epic quest for perfection. Even though rowing is not a popular sport in movies, this does not at all prevent the plot from choosing the right tone and making the viewer swim against the current on the waves of torture and lunacy.
In many ways, "Mania" makes notable progress: the camerawork at one moment manages to capture the athletes merging with the boat and confronting the captivating darkness of the water (often heroines train at 5 a.m.), the next, the confusion of the young girl who, trying to ignore the dizziness and tinnitus, ruthlessly tortures her own body.
But one of the main differences between "Mania" and the same "Obsession" is the absence of a student-teacher duet. No one forces Alex to bury herself alive. Her coaches, on the contrary, don't mind reminding her that she's a student first and an athlete second. The torturer-mentor who forces her to wake up before dawn and make cuts on her body is Alex herself. And in some ways this is indeed a deafeningly bold move, but it is also the reason why gaps are formed in the dramaturgy and much-needed tension is lost to the genre.
In revealing the dark side of sports, Hadaway uses rowing only as a way to talk about the open wound of modernity. It doesn't take an abundance of metaphors to realize that the author's statement is about the obsession with success that is destroying the younger generation. Who better than Millennials or Zummers to know the fear of the future and the painful desire to achieve as much as possible. You don't have to go far: teen movies and millionaire bloggers on the Web are screaming about it. As a result of the formation of this reality, it is mistakenly believed that if you are not good enough to row/orchestra/whatever, you remain a nobody. "Mania" uses the nerve of sports drama and long paddles to ultimately expose the psychological state of a female student whose lust for victory almost costs her life. And that seems to be one reason why we should remember the name of aspiring director Lauren Hadaway.
This article was sponsored by Mitra Khobbakht
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