Mark Reviews Movies: THE NOVICE

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 16, 2021

There is no tangible, measurable way to achieve perfection, but there is always better. That's the apparent philosophy of Alex Dall (Isabelle Fuhrman), a college freshman who joins the school's rowing team for mysterious reasons but for obvious results. The protagonist of The Novice wants to be the best—end of story.

That is the extent of the story of director Lauren Hadaway's screenplay, which follows Alex on her quest to be the best member of the rowing team. This takes up almost all of her time, pushes her mind and body beyond their limits, and starts to look a bit too much like a mission of self-destruction.

A couple of people mention all of these things to Alex over the course of this story, but if she hears those concerns, they mean nothing to her. There's always a new goal—a better time on the rowing machine, a better position to have in the boat, an opponent to beat, a physical ailment to push through or ignore, a school record that can be topped.

Early on, the assumption here is that Alex, like the fellow novice teammate who becomes her only sort-of friend and toughest competition on the team, needs to excel in order to earn an athletic scholarship to stay in school. The reality is much simpler, which only makes Alex's punishing dedication all the more complicated and troubling.

Hadaway, making her feature directorial debut, puts us intimately and uncomfortably into Alex's mindset, using some visual, editing, and aural effects and trickery (In terms of sound, Alex Weston's driving, discordant score is particularly noteworthy). All of it works together to create a sympathetic sense of perspective, giving us the feeling that, while we might not know the specifics of Alex's history and intentions (She eventually makes them clear), her success on the team will decide the immediate and future course of her life.

We want her to succeed. As the nature and extent of her obsession become more difficult to rationalize or justify, though, that sense of understanding transforms into one of mounting terror for what she might do to herself.

Alex's obsession for success is apparent from the start. She takes quizzes and tests in a physics course, overseen by teacher's aid Dani (Dilone), over and over, until the other students have left and the allotted time for class has ended. Dani doesn't understand Alex's habit, and the back-and-forth debates between them turn to flirtations, which later become a relationship, as soon as Alex is finished with the class for the semester.

That's one side of Alex's life, but the majority of it is overtaken by rowing. She joins the team as a novice, hoping to make the cut to become an official member, and gradually, any sense of college life, her past relationships, and academics fades. Alex devotes herself to exercising, training, and figuring out a strategy to make the junior-varsity team.

Her coaches (played by Jonathan Cherry and Kate Drummond) try to give the newcomer a sense of perspective on the sport and her purpose in college, but Alex only hears how the coaches praise Jamie (Amy Forsyth), a fellow novice who needs a scholarship to afford the university, as a "natural." Alex has to be better than Jamie, not only for herself, but also to prove that putting in the work is a greater accomplishment than natural talent.

Hadaway makes this ongoing process of self-improvement and escalating goals into a grueling one by way of staging, shot selection, and rhythm. A couple of moments see the world around Alex fade into blackness, as a spotlight shines on the character, preparing to partake in a rigorous regimen on the rowing machine (The rhythm of a stroke—legs, arms, body—becomes a mantra for Alex in her everyday life). The filmmaker uses close-ups and slow-motion to emphasize the strain on Alex's face and muscles, while beads of sweat drip down and fly into the air. In the boat, working with and increasingly fighting against teammates who find Alex's fixation and attitude off-putting (She starts to hear their insults and murmurs like the cawing of the school's crow mascot), there's a real sense of the physical and mental effort of the sport—the focus, the synchronization, the forces at play with and against the water—and how quickly something can go wrong.

For her part, Fuhrman's performance displays a similar degree of investment in terms of body and mind. Within the work, we see a single-minded commitment in Fuhrman's stares, moments of immediate defeat and impending failure brushed aside with re-born determination, and a posture that evolves from defensively enclosed to self-righteously confident. So much of this performance—of a character who keeps a lot of her beliefs and motivation close to the chest, except in a scene with Dani that makes it painfully transparent—takes form in the actor's physicality. In the same way, so much of Alex's past and the potential consequences of her obsessive, perfectionist nature are there on her body—scars of an unknown origin, made terribly clear later, on her chest.

Through the filmmaking and the performance, we come to understand Alex—sympathize with and root for her. The Novice, though, gradually turns the conventions of its underdog story on their head (The unfortunately rushed finale turns a climactic race into an almost-suicidal mission). As that understanding of Alex deepens, our sympathy may remain, but it's permeated with discomfort and fear.

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