Berlin Review: ‘Against The Ice’
16.02.2022 - 04:01
/ deadline.com
Heroism, obsession, sheet ice and huskies. It’s a winning combination, the stuff of stories that show men – because these were stories about men – reaching beyond themselves to survive the elements. Sometimes, even in stories, they didn’t survive because they sacrificed themselves for their comrades, finding their best selves in tough situations. Before imaginary superheroes took over, these tall tales and true of derring-do used to fill children’s annuals.
Against the Ice is exactly that kind of story. In 1909, a Danish expedition led by Captain Einar Mikkelsen headed for the northwest of Greenland. Its mission was to try to recover information collected by a previous expedition and buried in a cairn at a point when the members of that team knew they wouldn’t make it back. The cairn’s location is marked on a hand-drawn map recovered from one of their bodies. This is the reality of a life of adventure: life, death and bad maps.
Exploration is only possible in summer. Leaving a ship and crew berthed on the shore, Mikkelsen and one of his crew – ship’s mechanic Iver Iverson (Joe Cole), the only man on board who volunteered for the job – set out to cross hundreds of miles of ice, including rivers filled with ice floes, with dog sleds. When the dogs are dead, they have to travel on foot. The country is uncharted and as tough as anyone might imagine. So are they.
Peter Flinth’s film fills us in efficiently on the purpose of the enterprise. The Danish government financed the first expedition in 1906 and this follow-up mission in order to establish that the northwest of Greenland, which the United States is trying to claim is an island within its coastal waters, is actually part of the Greenland land mass. The area never has been
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