j* movie reviews 2020

Expedition to the End of the World (2013)

A motley crew take a wooden boat to Greenland and spend a lot of time worrying about polar bears.

Look I am mortally afraid of all big bears, including polar bears so I totally feel it. And in some ways it was relieving to have this topic covered so extensively in a doco - I feel more often we just get the "oooh polar bear angle." One of the team has previously been attacked by a polar bear too, so he spends a bit of time talking about that. Because of this whole polar bear thing, whenever they land several of the team are walking around with rifles. They also spend some time investigating the damage a polar bear has done to a shack, after they witness it breaking in.

But sadly most of this isn't about polar bear fear. The crew features a range of scientists and artists and philosophers on some kind of meandering journey. It feels a bit like watching your dotty uncle potter around the yard for hours. I mean it's a nice yard, huge mountains, glaciers, fjords and all. But all the members just seem to be pottering. There's the guy pottering for stone age encampments. The guys pottering by drilling into permafrost to take core samples. The pottering by drawing pencil sketches. The fish killing pottering... for food and science and bait for more fish. I don't know, it's all just very vague and pottering. Even dottering maybe? Definitely dithering.

I think this is meant to be one of those expeditions that brings a range of interdisciplinary types together in a sort of incubator. But if anything good came of it, that's not at all apparent. The only time they sit down to converse about each others work feels super staged and at times downright weird. Maybe they were all just quite dull? Because this one geologist with a pony-tail ends up hogging most of the screentime. And he's not that riveting either.

Towards the end it decides, maybe "veers" is more accurate, into the territory of "why are we all here" existential philosophy crisis... which just ends with another awkward conversation between the philosopher and maybe the geochemist? I did struggle keeping them all straight in my head. There are sort of undercurrents around climate change, but nothing concretely intriguing.

Also, I'm no sailor, but I really felt uncomfortable watching this big old wooden pirate ship crashing into icebergs. It's dual language, so English and subtitles. But the subtitling is quite poorly done in that it's in white, on a background that quite often features a lot of white. At least watching at home you can pause it to peer at the less clear words.

J* gives it 3 stars.

One of those stars is purely for portraying polar bear fear and loathing, and another for scenery. As a doco it's not particularly coherent.

PS. I probably should be more excited about the amount of Metallica in the soundtrack, but I'm not.