{"id":1079,"date":"2018-12-03T15:29:32","date_gmt":"2018-12-03T08:29:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/site\/uncategorized\/film-review-swim-team-2016\/"},"modified":"2020-09-28T19:10:26","modified_gmt":"2020-09-28T12:10:26","slug":"film-review-swim-team-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/film-review-en\/film-review-swim-team-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Film Review: Swim Team (2016)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Swim Team<\/em> (2016)<\/strong> is not just a documentary that speaks up about advocacy, the right to live, and inclusivity; it is a movie to be watched with your family.<\/p>\n

The audience were led to explore the journey of Jersey Hammerheads, a swimming team initiated by a couple, Michael and Maria McQuay, for Special Olympics which is restricted for the disabled. Within the team, their son\u2014Mikey McQuay, was also a member. However, this team wasn\u2019t managed to be merely a hobby club for the disabled. They had applied their vision carefully since the beginning: implemented a serious training model, set high targets, and built competitive climate and mindset; even to their own son. Through Hammerhead, we were invited to feel various emotions in participating a big competition by the journey of underestimated party\u2014such as the movie Coach Carter <\/em>(2005).<\/p>\n

Swim Team<\/em> was intentionally served itself as a discussion space for the marginalized. Sports (especially competition) for the disabled indeed haven\u2019t received many spotlights from public; including media who played a big role to spread those attentions. Moreover, many athletes who joined Hammerhead were of Asian and Hispanic descendants. They were both disabled and<\/em> a part of the minority; a condition rarely highlighted by mainstream medias.<\/p>\n

However, this movie didn\u2019t promote the disability issue in a stern and incomprehensible tone; they did it through intimate touches that could be understood by everyone. We could feel it by the narrative about three main Hammerhead\u2019s personnel recounted in the movie: Mikey McQuay, Robbie Justino, and Kelvin Truong. The three of them were showed as ordinary people who encountered many general adolescent problems. Mikey grew to be an innocent and awkward high school student who still showed off his collection of stuffed animals. As a matter of fact, he was not at all ready to enter the next stage of his life; be it college or work life. Sure, there were concerns from his parents on how Mikey would be when he turned 18. On the other hand, Robbie still read like how elementary students did.<\/p>\n

Even though he was friendly to others, he didn\u2019t have any friends\u2014that\u2019s what his mother thought. All the while Kelvin had a hard time to control his body and his emotions, particularly when he had to meet with many people. Doesn\u2019t it feel like coming of age movies?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also worth to mention that this movie didn\u2019t forget to show their parents\u2019 point of view. Started with their fear of the children\u2019s fate in the upcoming days, the effort to construct a bright future, the pressure from many sides, and so forth. Lara Stolman, the director, combined the stories into an intimate narrative about a family who struggled to create their version of happy and successful family. Those things are done for their own children; some things that could be done by every parent in their own life narrative.<\/p>\n

Through Swim Team<\/em>, we tried to identify swimming as an attempt to understand human via the stories inside and outside of the competition pool. Swimming, to Hammerhead\u2019s personnel, was the next stage to learn self-control, disciplinary, mutual understanding, pride, and other soft skills that often weren\u2019t taught at school. For parents, the activity became a medium to cultivate important values in life also to grow the children\u2019s potency that could be used as their reference to construct the future. And by those two sides of the story, this movie was perfect to be consumed by children and their parents simultaneously. That\u2019s exactly why Swim Team<\/em> is a movie suited to watch with your family.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Swim Team (2016) is not just a documentary that speaks up about advocacy, the right to live, and inclusivity; it is a movie to be watched with your family. The audience were led to explore the journey of Jersey Hammerheads, a swimming team initiated by a couple, Michael and Maria McQuay, for Special Olympics which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":443,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"edition":[63],"class_list":["post-1079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film-review-en","edition-ffd-2018-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1079"},{"taxonomy":"edition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/edition?post=1079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}