Maidentrip (Jillian Schlesinger, 2013)
This is a documentary about the Dutch girl, Laura Dekker, who embarked on an around-the-world solo sailing trip when she was 14 years old. It is largely comprised of footage she herself shot while on the sea. It’s edited in a pretty straightforward way (in other words, it’s not very artsy), but it’s really good.
I feel like the important thing that this film is saying is that some people just don’t fit into the society they were born into, and we really should let them live the life they need - even if they are young and even if the world is scary. Even if it goes against things we’ve agreed are right and good for almost everybody else. Dekker dealt with a huge legal battle with the Dutch government when she first announced her plan, but she was ultimately allowed to make her trip. Obviously it would be a different situation assessing what happened if she’d died at sea - and just because it didn’t happen doesn’t mean that it couldn’t have. But it didn’t happen. She was allowed the chance to do something huge, and she succeeded. She was right that she was fully capable of sailing around the globe by herself. It would have been terrible for her to be denied this experience, and our world would have a little less magic in it if she hadn’t taken her trip when she did.
When she speaks about how right she feels alone at sea and how anxious and unnatural it feels to be on land and around people, I don’t see anything wrong with that. While I am pretty darned introverted, I absolutely need all of my people. But some folks do not require much human contact, and I think we should leave space in the world for them.
Cheers to Laura Dekker and her friends, Neptune and Bird.
