Deep Water

“This was something that a human hadn’t yet attempted to do … there was considerable doubt if a human could take it.” “This” was the 1968 Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, when the British newspaper dared any single person to circumnavigate the globe in a yacht. The five-thousand pound purse lured eight professional sailors and one “mystery man,” Donald Crowhurst, an electrician and weekend sailor who desperately needed the prize money. “If he went forward,” notes one observer, “he was committing suicide. If he came back, he was ruined … ” Crowhurst’s story is culled from his cryptic log, in movies he shot while failing to sail around the world, and in interviews with the family and friends who discovered that they never really knew the man.

Edina Cinema, 3911 W. 50th St., Edina; 651-649-4416.