Words by JANE CROWTHER
Luke Lorentzen’s meditative year-long study of a Brooklin boat yard in Maine is nautical nirvana for any sailor, but you don’t need to know your port from starboard to appreciate the craftsmanship and community that goes into building a bespoke $4.5million 56-foot sailing yacht. Following the team of 60 builders at Brooklin Boat Yard – from felling the wood to polishing the deck, and through the New England seasons – Coretzen’s gorgeous tone poem is as much about a niche industry as it is about masculinity and the lure of salt water for sustenance and sport.
Beginning with the launch of a newly completed vessel, we’re introduced to the men who will create a made-to-measure ship of dreams for a giggly financial advisor to sail around the world in. As the team watch their work slip into the water over beers and a cookout, the graft begins anew with the hull of a new boat taking shape in the dockyard on the edge of Jericho Bay. Project managing the build is Trent, a zen new father who is told in his gentle appraisal to be more forceful with his staff. From an outsider’s POV it doesn’t seem he needs to be as the gang turns up at 7am each morning with their particular set of skills; planing, dovetailing, sanding, gluing and carving the local wood into a feat of engineering and artisan achievement. We watch as planks are pressed together like a jigsaw, the ship’s wheel is clamped incrementally into a circle, the sanding team sway in synchronised silence, a beautifully carved cabin is wheeled down the hill and lowered into precision-drilled holes… it’s hypnotic to watch, especially when given regional and cultural context.
Coretzen is as interested in the world and lives around the endeavour, the bucolic that seems to be poured into the very fabric of the boat. He charts the beauty enveloping Brooklin; a blue bay dotted with the fluttering white triangles of sails during a regatta, a duckling floating on purple water at dusk, lobster potters hauling their glistening catch, the drilling of an ice-fishing hole, the doleful clang of a red harbour bell, children shaking apples from a tree, a peachy sunset, the mowing of an emerald lawn. This little corner of Maine is painted as hardy, idyllic – the only sour notes coming when management very reluctantly dismisses a worker for repeatedly not taking direction or when Trent complains about the cost of his car payments. There is little exploration of hard-scrabble lives or the fragility of this livelihood – and on that level, the film may be considered slight for some. But if you’re looking for a contemplative 90 minute foray into a quiet world where you can practically smell the wood and taste the sea spray, Boatbuilders provides a shipshape escape.
Words by JANE CROWTHER
Images courtesy of SPARK FEATURES/METFILM
Boatbuilders premiered at the 83rd Venice Film Festival