Known for his work on Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Joachim Rønning's latest film, Young Woman and the Sea, tells the true story of Trudy Ederle, the first woman to swim across the English Channel. FILMHOUNDS spoke with the director about the challenges of bringing this inspiring story to life, working with the ocean, and collaborating with producer Jerry Bruckheimer.
The true story of Young Woman and the Sea seems to have fallen out of living memory, and it is almost at the point where it's become a myth. It would have been quite easy to make this a really spectacular story that focused on all the big stuff, but it's quite grounded by the way that you look at Trudy (Daisy Ridley) and her family. I wondered why that was important to you?
Well, I think, for me, the story of the family is almost as important as telling the story of her journey, you know? And I think, the family also represents the period of time where you have these different points of view with a strong mother and her trying to break with tradition and the father kind of clinging on to tradition. When you make a biopic and you tell a story about this kind of character, like through the eye of someone who is so focused on one thing, it can be sometimes a little hard for the audience to identify with that. That's why looking through the eyes of the family members becomes our way in.
I think when you look at the films that you've made recently as as well as the fact that this is produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, there's a lot of big blockbuster experience going into Young Woman and the Sea. At the time the true story behind this would have been huge news, even though it's been forgotten now. Do you think that blockbuster experience behind the film helped to restore the size of Trudy's story?
I always try to make the movie as good as possible. And, you know, I'm focusing on what I believe in and what captures me. I do like making movies that have big stories, and that have some scope to them. Not necessarily only visually but emotional scope too. I feel like for a movie like this, it lends itself to that.
You have our tiny character against the ocean as a backdrop, and it's like a lot of what I like to go to the movies and see. I like to be immersed. I like to make movies for the big screen, you know? Not to be too pretentious about it, but in a way, I feel that cinema is my art form. That's what I grew up with, and that's what inspired me to be a filmmaker. but it doesn't necessarily need to be just big for bigness' sake. It's all about the tools that we can use, and, it can be epic on other levels apart from just, you know, big.
I've done big movies previously, in the sense that they are tentpole movies. Like big family Disney adventure movies and things like that. But, it's just in my DNA. For me, it's all about characters, always about characters. But then I do like having a backdrop that can elevate it somehow.
Another thing that you seem to be quite familiar with now is shooting at sea — I wondered where the interest in that comes from?
Well, I grew up by the ocean. I'm from a small town in the south of Norway. I grew up on boats, so I'm drawn to the ocean. I long for it when I'm not on it, and I'm rarely on it except when I'm filming. So I guess stories that have that element to them, I'm kind of drawn to it. And I think in this case with Young Woman and the Sea, it's almost a cliche to say but it's like the ocean is its own character. So it was, for me, a great combination of showing the beauty, but also the obstacle and the difficulties of the ocean. That's why I also wanted to shoot it out on the ocean because I wanted to be as true to the story as we could, except, you know, obviously we were not risking our lives out there like Trudy did. But I hope in some way it informed us, and we got close to it. And I hope that the audience can feel that somehow we did it for real.
Young Woman and the Sea is now streaming on Disney+
