Hits & Misses: The Boys in the Boat: Two Hits

By Joyce Mason on February 4, 2024

Based on the 2013 book by Daniel James Brown, “The Boys in the Boat” tells the story of the remarkable rowing team that brought glory to the University of Washington during the darkest days of the Great Depression. We immediately know the economic challenge faced by the young men as we see some of them carefully folding newspaper pages to fit the inside of their shoes in order to cover the holes in the leather soles.

Among the most financially challenged, Joe Rantz (Callum Turner) has been told by the school’s financial office that he will be dropped unless he can pay the university’s tuition. Tall and muscular, Joe had worked part-time since he was thirteen when his father deserted him after the death of his mother. But even part-time jobs have disappeared, so when Joe hears that if he can make the university’s rowing team, his tuition will be covered, he immediately goes to the tryouts.

U of W’s crew coach, Al Ulbrickson (Joel Edgerton), warns the dozens of young men competing for the eight seats on the boat that “crewing was the most difficult sport in the world.” It not only requires muscular strength but also “twice the lung capacity of the normal person.” Lastly, he tells them that crew members are no longer eight separate individuals but “eight separate parts of the same racehorse.” We follow the eight men who are chosen, plus the coxswain and one substitute, throughout their training.

George Clooney directed this film, and Martin Ruhe photographed it. The two seem to have worked seamlessly because the many long shots of the boat and crew gliding through the coastal waters add calm and elegance to several scenes. We don’t get to know each of the eight men well, but we do witness the pain, challenges, and joys of our protagonist. In lighter moments, we see that Joe has attracted the attention of Joyce (Hadley Robinson), who claims that he had a crush on her in elementary school. He does not remember this, but he enjoys the flirtation she provides.

Painful for Joe is a chance encounter with his father, who has returned to Seattle but has not cared to seek him out. With the total absence of a father in his life, Joe finds himself spending spare moments in the company of George Pocock (Peter Guinness), who creates the racing boats called shells. George senses Joe’s need for some kind of a father substitute, and the two find camaraderie as they sand and varnish the craft while striving for perfection.

With a screenplay by Mark I. Smith, “The Boys in the Boat” covers the glory that this Depression Era team of rowers brings not only to the University of Washington but to the entire country. Much is made over their success since previously Ivy League schools had won all of the nationwide competitions. Now, the stage is even larger because the year is 1936, and the summer Olympics are to be in Berlin with Adolf Hitler eager to show off his German athletes.

Although Smith closely follows Brown’s book, he does omit a concept explored early in the book. Most of the young men who made the team with no previous rowing experience had worked as teenagers in the lumber industry, and the theory posited by Brown was that the muscles developed by lumberjacks were the neck and shoulder muscles needed for success in rowing.