Our editor Dr Jon Sutton watches ‘Wild Water’, accompanied by a Q&A with the film’s director Ben Davis.
09 August 2024
It's dark on the hill up to Gaddings Dam, an 1830s mill pond on the West Yorkshire moors. The group set off, torches picking out the steep path. Their early start and exertions are rewarded as the dawn breaks just when they arrive at the water, and they strip down to their cossies and slip in together under the rising sun.
We go on to see the pond in all weathers and temperatures, ever-changing but always enticing for those hardy wild swimmers. Gaddings Dam, says director Ben Davis, is the central character in his film, to hang the swimmers' life stories from.
And all the stuff of life is there: all the challenge and change. I'll leave this 'spoiler free', but two aspects stood out for me.
Firstly, community. The enthusiasm of wild swimmers is clearly infectious. Even 'Corner Man' didn't stay on his own for long; people end up swimming together (wise for safety anyway), and sharing tears, laughter and cake. It's a space that's non-judgemental (including, Director Ben Davis noted in the Q&A which followed this screening, around body image). More experienced dippers such as Clive take newbies under their wings. Even the hordes who invade England's highest beach in the summer are spoken about with generosity (although not so much by those locals at the base of the hill, who feel Countryfile – and presumably films like this – have a lot to answer for).
Secondly, the transformative power of water. If you Google 'the psychological benefits of open water swimming', you'll find a flood of studies around this. Many, as is often the way with the more naturalistic psychological research, will say 'Issues remain with study quality', and around correlation vs causation. But really, for me, the point of this film is that the transformation starts the moment that alarm goes off at 4:30am. Or, less dramatically, when the husband finally agrees to try a shared hobby even if he's only going to stay in for three minutes. Sure, there are presumably all sorts of physiological changes associated with immersion in cold water, and it makes sense that there's a burgeoning field of research around that. But when you hear a participant in this film say that someone at work had joked about the idea of them doing a triathlon, and they thought 'I'll show them', and soon they were up on the Dam… well, the transformation must be well underway before they dip a toe in the water.
The links between wild swimming, mental health and life change were even more explicit in the mini-documentary which preceded this particular screening at the Phoenix Theatre in Leicester. 'Tonic of the Sea', by filmmaker Jonathan J. Scott, highlights Katie Maggs' recovery from anxiety, myaclonic seizures and stress related burnout through daily dawn swimming in the sea. The film starts with the sound of breathing, in and out, and Katie saying 'I was desperate to find my way back to me'. Again it was notable that Katie wasn't on her own on this journey – she met Mike on the beach, 'the swimmers found me… Mike came along at the right time'. 'It's beautiful to be involved in,' Mike said: 'I'm witnessing what's going on with her on a daily basis.'
I asked Davis whether he felt his film had ended up being representative of the prominence of mental health issues and neurodivergence in the wild swimming community; or whether the characters who, by his admission, 'fell by the wayside' in not making the cut, were more likely to be those who simply liked a bit of a swim. He replied that the Outdoor Swimming Society had been somewhat wary of losing sight of the message that people can swim just for the joy of swimming, without having problems. Davis said he hoped he had still got that into the film, while being realistic about the emotional heft of the 'big stories'. 'The people who come forward are very keen to share their story… you turn the camera on and it all comes out.' The main message of his film, Davis said, is 'Look how transformative clean water can be on people's lives… it's our right, and why we haven't got that, I just can't understand it.'
Mike in Tonic of the Sea also spoke to the immediacy of the transformative power of water. 'If you've done something that is exceptional – and whenever you say to people "we go swimming before the sun rises, in the sea, in the wild sea", suddenly their perception of you changes a little bit, because they think "oh gosh I couldn't do that' – that, in building up a sense of self-worth and achievement, is massively important.'
In wild water, then, we can find both solitude and companionship; a space for difference that is also 'the great equaliser'; somewhere we truly feel the dark just before the dawn. So whatever you find yourself immersed in, sit with the shock, breathe in and breathe out, and move forward.
SOURCE:
https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/transformative-power-wild-water(accessed 12.08.24)
No comments:
Post a Comment