As the subject of a documentary, Veiga Grétarsdóttir is a generous one. As the subject of this particular documentary, the kayaker, who became the first person to circle the island country of Iceland on the vessel of choice, isn’t done many favors. Against the Current is something of a double entendre of a title, as one will discover. Almost inevitably, Grétarsdóttir must kayak against currents to circle the island. Additionally, she is a transgender woman, a fact which gives her notoriety in two other people groups with regard to this accomplishment. The failure of director Óskar Páll Sveinsson’s documentary is that we barely have a deeper understanding of this story than the previous two sentences provide by the time Grétarsdóttir reaches the starting (and ending) point of her kayaking journey.
Each side of this story is defined almost exclusively by broad and mundane observations about Grétarsdóttir’s sports accomplishment and life before and after transition. In terms of the former, we get the general details of the task before her – the 2,000-kilometer circumference of Iceland and the unprecedented feat of kayaking around it – and we get scenes of her training for the journey, then performing the feat. Such a feat is undeniably fascinating, but we never have a proper understanding of what this accomplishment might mean to Grétarsdóttir herself. That might be because of Sveinsson’s focus shifting quite often to the other, seemingly more important half of the story.
As far as her journey from living as a son, father and husband to finally beginning to realize her gender identity in late 2014, the documentary is broad in its observations and rudimentary in its presentation of them. We have understood the grueling, then relieving, process of active self-awareness for a transgender person for quite some time, but Sveinsson and his team of editors merely use this story as a method of defining Grétarsdóttir entirely by the sporting feat ahead of her. We get some slideshow presentations of a childhood spent in dysphoric discomfort, a few anecdotes about the early signs of her later path, and the details of the surgical processes therein. That’s about it.
The story itself, then, is a subversive one, especially given the current and tiresome discourse surrounding transgender placement in sporting events – specifically, that the equipment (so to speak) with which one is born defines one’s future athleticism. It’s certainly nice to see someone fight back against such a prejudiced and gendered line of thought, and the best parts of the documentary involve the remembrances of Grétarsdóttir’s family and friends who offer their own clues regarding their loved one’s future in this regard.
The telling of this story is far from subversive, however, and Sveinsson continually undermines the potential of his subject by way of utterly ordinary and stubbornly routine editorial and storytelling decisions. By the time the film gets to its climax – the kayaking accomplishment itself, which at least boasts some gorgeous photography when on the water – Against the Current has long since lost itself in the banality of its own methodology.
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