Plot Synopsis and Critical Review

Swimming Upstream is a social problem, women’s, coming of age, sport, social realist and biopic film, which follows Toni Fingletons dream to become the number one backstroker in the World. Toni lives in a dysfunctional family where his three brothers, younger sister and Mother live in the fear of their Father, Harold Fingleton. Swimming Upstream is a heart-rending and inspirational true story of Toni Fingletons struggle to be accepted, and loved by his father. The film deals with issues of working class struggles, domestic violence, reconciliation, success and failure.

At the community swimming pool, young Toni Fingleton is having a wonderful time swimming laps, until his bullying older brother, Harry Junior (David Hoflin), pulls him unwilling out of the water. The pool for Toni is his escape from the constant arrogance, and abuse at home. His father (Geoffrey Rush), a violent and somewhat bipolar character, calls for his return home where Toni’s mother (Judy Davis) is hanging the washing and talking to her neighbour reluctantly. With a call from young Dianne (Keeara Byrnes), to let her mother know that Harold is on his way home, Dora quickly raps up her conversation with her neighbour, and continues housewife duties.
“Heaven Forbid your mother should have friends”.

As Harold walks through the door, the family’s money situation becomes clear. It is Harold’s and Dora’s wedding anniversary, and unfortunately for Dora she is not greeted with a present, but a song and dance in front of the five children. Everything seems happy and somewhat romantic, until Toni tells his audience, “Dads moods could swing widely”. Shouting and chaos commences from the parents bedroom and with empathy fatigue the five children escape to the local poor. Soon after, Dora makes the family breakfast, and calls for Harold to come to the table. Harold has different ideas and decides to stay in bed and read the paper. Dora getting quite angry decides to go into the bedroom and give Harold his breakfast. Being arrogant, Harold refuses his breakfast, and Dora out of frustration and anger throws his breakfast in his face. Running out of fear, Dora makes it to the road before the children finally restrain Harold.

After many failed attempts to gain his fathers affection, Toni asks his father to come down to the local pool to watch him and John (Daxyl) swim. His father surprisingly makes his way down to the pool where he notices Johns and Toni’s swimming potential. He requests that the two boys commence training immediately. The two boys continue training throughout their teenage years, winning competitions, and becoming well known in Australia for their swimming talent. “We kept training and winning”

With John being their father’s favourite, Toni tries harder to be noticed and accepted. He believes that his talent as a swimmer will finally get his fathers recognition. It is not until their father comes home drunk, from a protest at work, that Harold’s true feelings of Toni are revealed.
 “When I was your age I was tougher”.
“You’re far too week”.
“I wish you didn’t exist”.
Toni consoles in his mother about the hurtful things his father has said to him, and this is where we are given some information about the possible reason for Harold’s moods swings, and intolerable nature.
“He doesn’t care about me. Does he?”
“His mother was a terrible drunk”.
“I think he had to do some awful things to survive”.

Dora, having to deal with the straining relationships at home, is dealt with another hard blow when she cannot afford to buy the groceries, or use a tab anymore, from the fresh food store. Knowing that it is her husbands fault, she marches into a male bar and protests for him to come home. He violently grabs her head, and tells her to stop embarrassing him.

With Toni winning the Junior Championships for backstroke, the film skips to a year later. Training is becoming a chore for John, and unfortunately for Harold, John’s laziness eventuates in him loosing a meet. This ultimately sends Harold into another drinking bender, this time leading to a much more serious and irreversible scenario. Seeing his father drunk, Harry Jnr., decides to have a drinking contest with his father, this causes many hurtful insults, and personality attacks to be voiced. Dora and Toni oversee the argument and decide to step in when the two men are on the verge of killing each other. Unluckily for Dora her finger makes its way into Harry Jnr’s., mouth, where she nearly looses it. The relationship between Harold, and his eldest son, is damaged and beyond repair.

Harold’s relationship with his family is tested again when he decides to train John in backstroke (Toni’s stroke) behind Toni’s back. Toni is unaware that John is receiving extra training, until they are standing next to each other at the State championships. Toni, feeling confused and bitter, looses the race to John. Confiding in his mother about his father’s deceit, Toni expresses his desire to be a winner, and escape from the life he is living in Australia. His training and hard work finally pays off when he beats John, and qualifies for the Australian Championships.

Ecstatic and proud, Toni goes home to a dishevelled and angry father who blames him for ruining his dream. Toni becomes the figure of the past, the one that held Harold back from succeeding as a football player. It becomes perfectly clear throughout this scene that Harold can not bare to see Toni succeed.
“Maybe I didn’t want it”.
“It’s not my dream”.

With Harold drinking again, the night quickly turns into a terrifying situation for the Fingleton siblings. Harold becomes quite violent with Dora, and the night ends with Toni and John having to take their mother to the hospital, because she has attempted suicide with sleeping pills.
When the Australian championships finally arrive, Toni takes home the gold medal for backstroke. Once he is home, he offers his drunken father the medallion he has just won. His father turns up his noise and, in one of the most powerful scenes of the film, sweeps all the trophies and pictures off the mantelpiece in a fit of rage. Toni is beside himself with emotions. The disbelief and anger I felt towards Harold in this particular scene was extreme. I felt so sympathetic towards Toni, because I could see the real emotion and heartache he was feeling.

Just before the qualifiers for the Empire games, John tells his father that he wants to compete. Harold is overwhelmed with happiness, and sets him straight to training. When the Empire games finally come around, Toni and John compete in the same race. The neck and neck race, finishes with Toni receiving gold. Harold is disappointed and angry with John for loosing the race and does not recognise Toni for his accomplishment.

It is not until the Commonwealth Games that Toni’s plead for his father acceptance is denied for the last time. With the family watching intently at home, Toni competes in his last race for the film. Throughout the race Harold glances up from the newspaper slightly, to realise that his son is swimming, “his fastest speed ever”. At this point in the film Harold is finally recognising Toni for his ability to swim (something that Toni has always wanted from his father), but this does not last long. Toni comes second, and Harold’s facial expression shows that he is repulsed and disgusted in Toni for loosing the race. His father’s disgust is further exemplified when Dora decides to scrapbook all of Toni’s newspaper articles and photos. In outrage, he snatches the scrapbook off Dora, and with her restraining to let go, he hits her across the face.

Dora decides to leave Harold, and with his packed bags, he silently exits from their lives.Dora has one last tragic instalment when Toni decides to leave Australia after being granted a Harvard scholarship. No one wants him to leave, because he is the hope that has kept the family together for so long.

Before Toni leaves, he has one last thing to deal with and that is his father.  Going to see him at work, the two talk very briefly, and the conversation ends with a feeling that their conflicts, anger, and resent has not been resolved.
“All I wanted was my dads love”.

The film ends with Toni swimming laps at Harvard followed by the famous handshake his brother John and him used to do as kids, signifying the way Harold had destroyed their friendship.

I really enjoyed this film, and I felt inspired by Toni’s persistence to succeed even though he was not able to get what he really desired, his fathers love. I felt like the film addressed complex relationships, and the actors were able to perform a high emotional registrar.  I felt for Toni and his relationship with his father, and in certain scenes, he had me on the verge of tears. I thought Judy Davies and Geoffrey Rush both had very powerful performances, which lead to dramatic suspense, and an inspirational story line. I could not fault any of the performances, as I believe they were all at a high level.

I enjoyed the films heartrending story line (Anthony Fingleton) and I believe the extraordinary cinematography (Martin McGrath) added to the emotional registrar of the film. Some of the moments captured on the screen could be seen as art for their beautiful movement, lighting, setting and angles. Two of these moments is when Harold sweeps all of the trophies off the mantelpiece, and when Harold snatches the scrapbook off Dora. Each of these scenes shows the characters emotion (without words), along with the rising intensity and relationship between the characters. I thought all the cast and crew did an excellent job in this movie and I would rate it four stars out of five.