3 Short Paragraphs: Arctic

2018, Joe Penna (some shorts & TV) -- download

Get up, check the fishing lines, scrape the snow out of the SOS ditches (black dirt beneath stands out), eat some raw fish and climb to the top of a nearby ridge to hand-crank the beeping alert box. This is Overgård's (Mads Mikkelsen, Polar) routine, into which we are tossed. There is no background, no plane crash, no flashbacks to a family life or coworkers that miss him. We just get the snow, the cold and the isolation. It is quiet and morose. That he is still mostly sane is astounding. And then a helicopter appears to rescue him, only to crash themselves. Inside he finds the pilot dead, and the copilot clinging to life. From that moment onward, Overgård's routine is blown away like so much snow.

He has been surviving. Barely. He knows of a life station some distance away but he is afraid to go, afraid to make the trek that he cannot fully believe he will survive. But now the copilot is here. Not only does she provide the human contact he has missed for so long. But she will not survive his routine of waiting. So, he packs them up, makes the best of his stores and sleds he can, and off they go.

This movie is quiet and desperate. Overgård occasionally talks to her, but she barely ever wavers into consciousness. His only real companion is the terrain. They have to get to that station or she will die. But both may die on the way. It doesn't surprise me that Mads pulls off this story; he has always seemed like the actor who could well portray hardship. But the rest of the movie has to be given to the director, as he is the one who coaxes the portrayal out of the landscape and the temperature and the isolation. So, kudos, as I was left freezing and shaken at the end of the journey.