Swimming Upstream (2002)

As the target of his father Harold's (Geoffrey Rush) drunken abuse, young Tony Fingleton (Jesse Spencer) escapes to the underwater solitude of the local pool, where he aspires to win his father's love by becoming a national swimming champion. But when his cruel father pits Tony against his own brother in a competition to make the Olympic team, Tony must find the courage to swim his way to victory... and out of his father's emotionally crippling net. Product Description

Very good

About overcoming poverty, alcholism, family. The movie could actually have scored a little better, better than 4 stars - it was a bit too long I think. But it keeps your attention and has great acting peformances too. September 12, 2008

Great film!

This is a great movie made in Australia. Swimming upstream is approximately 97 minutes and is rated PG-13. It's a about two brothers that fight for their father's affections. Because their father is an alcoholic, he is short tempered, and mean. He favors one son over the other during their growing up years, and it shows throughout their lifetime. This movie takes place mostly in the pool. Where two brothers are coached by their father to compete in local, and out of town swim meets. The trials of growing up with a alcoholic father, and a weak mother, who is scared of her situation she lives in. This movie will keep you interested, and cheering for the underdog. Watch this movie, you will cheer, cry, and get angry, but it's a well made film. So many emotions in one movie! August 22, 2008

Watching Uphill

Swimming and writing poetry share one important characteristic; both activities can be richly satisfying to the practitioner while providing little, if any, spectator appeal. This limitation delivers a crippling blow to Swimming Upstream - without the obligatory water-churning competitions all that remains is a collection of drunken rampages and psychological tortures meted out by a deranged and permanently crippled father (Geoffrey Rush).

The film rests entirely on Rush's shoulders, and he is an amazing talent, well equal to the task. This is a man submerged in his own tortured world, incapable of asking for help or providing comfort. Instead, he revisits the cruelties and illnesses of his own childhood onto his children, passing them down like prized heirlooms. The father is an interesting character, and Rush owns him, unfortunately the screenwriter apparently dropped the scenes that might cause our perception of him to expand beyond pure loathing into some sort of understanding, if not sympathy.

Judy Davis, certainly one of the best actresses working today, wrestles with her Australian accent but offers a typically excellent performance. She has the unenviable chore of providing care for the children despite her husband's seeming determination to undermine her at every turn. Davis inhabits a doomed universe, and it is possible to see the life force draining right out of her. Despite her maternal commitment, despair is never too far away.

Superimposed on this dark canvas is a chirpy tale about a nice looking kid who wins a swim meet, goes to an Ivy League school, and gets a job on a hit TV show. It's such a spunky little parable that it actually has the nerve to ask, "If you do well for the wrong reason, if you struggle for the approval of somebody who will never give it to you and end up getting pretty good at something in process, is that such a bad thing, really?"

There is a scene where Tony (Jesse Spencer) is showing his medal to a blind drunk dad, spilling the beans, saying all the things these Stoic, macho Aussie men haven't said throughout the picture. (It's probably the performance that got him his job on House.) Tony is crying, dad is lurching, glassy-eyed like a bloated beast from the underworld. If at that moment Tony had used the medal to carve his name into dad's forehead - backwards - just so dad was reminded which son was the best swimmer every time he looked in the mirror - then maybe, just maybe, you would have something. As it is, what you've got is Disney directing 120 Days at Sodom. May 13, 2007

Great movie!

Wonderful story, fantastic acting. The amazing true story of a young man who yearned all his life for the acceptance of his alcoholic father. He becomes one of the greatest swimmers in Australian history. The human spirit is amazing. February 2, 2007

Good son, bad dad . . .

You wonder about any film that claims to be "based on a true story" how much of it is really true, and one feels this way about Tony Fingleton's account of his achievement as a championship swimmer in 1960s Australia. Beautifully filmed, with international stars Geoffrey Rush and Judy Davis, and with plausible performances by young actors with movie magazine good looks *and* the apparent ability to swim like professionals, this film is both entertaining and dramatic in ways that seem too perfect to be true.

Rush, as the alcoholic, tyrranical father, makes no secret of preferring another of his four sons, and constantly undercuts and humiliates the central character, Tony, whom he regards as weak and unmanly, apparently for no other reason than that he plays the piano. Haunted by demons of his own impoverished childhood, he drinks up what little he earns, while Davis as the mother provides the needed emotional support for a family forced to live in poverty. Fingleton's story, as he tells it, is one of overcoming all these obstacles to leverage a career as a young athlete into a full scholarship at Harvard. While he attempts to make peace with his father in the closing scenes, he portrays himself as selfless, endlessly patient, and forgiving. Meanwhile, it seems pretty obvious that he's using his autobiographical screenplay to get back at the old man. Definitely worth watching for the performances and the portrayal of a family ruled by an abusive alcoholic. You may wonder though about its authenticity. The DVD has a short featurette, including comments from the real Tony Fingleton, and numerous deleted scenes. August 20, 2006

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