Title: The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition |
Release Date: 2001 |
Nationality and Language: |
Running time: about 90 Minutes |
|
Distributor and Production Company: Cowboy Pictures and |
Director; Writer: based on book by Caroline Alexander |
Producer: Edward Pressman, Terrence Malick, L. Dennis Kozlwoski, Caroline Alexander, John Mack, Mike Ryan |
Cast: Liam Neeson, narrates |
Technical: 1.6 to 1, Dolby |
Relevance to DOASKDOTELL site: |
Review: This film gives an account of the 650 day vovage through the Antarctic by Ernest Shackleton and his men during a period approximately coincident with World War I. The ship breaks up in the ice, and the men wind up on a desperate journey for survival, eventually reaching a whaling station. It is unbelievable that men could have survived huddled together in makeshift shelters as long as they did on sipping ice and on their buddies’ body heat. Yes, this is an exercise in “unit cohesion.” The photography was a stunning feast of monochromatic blue, in various shades (down to blue green) following the density of the ice. Some scenes almost seem to have come from another planet. The soundtrack, when I saw it, was disturbed hy wow and flutter, however. March of the Penguins (“Marche
de ‘empereur”) (2005, Warner Independent
Pictures/National Geographic, dir. Luc Jacquet, 80
min, G) has the comforting if didactic voice of Morgan Freeman (he also
narrates in the recent War of the Worlds)
reminding us of Winston Hibler in the Walt Disney
nature “Adventureland” documentaries of the 1950s.
The film should be appreciated on two levels. First, it is a journey to the closest
thing to a trip to another planet available on Earth; the cinematography
brings this out even more in this film than in the Schackleton
film. The eyes are treated to a continuous landscape of whites, blues, and
steel gray. Even in summer in But the real point of this film is probably an allegorical treatment of family values. We see the culture wars reduced to a G rated movie. The emperor penguin indeed has a socially compelling life cycle, one which demonstrates enormous communal commitment to “family” and yet recognizes each individual bird. Aves they are, although they swim (down to 1700 feet, holding their breaths for 15 minutes) and waddle seventy miles from the coast to safe breeding grounds. They lay their fertilized eggs, and then the females wander back to feed, while the fathers sit on the eggs throughout the Antarctic winter, incubating them, huddling, taking turns on who sits in the warmer center, starving. The mothers come back, and their birdsongs can recognize mates, as they can later recognize offspring. Then the males and females take turns wandering to the beach to feed, but always maintaining the family unit. No deviation from the enormous duties of procreation is ever allowed or even conceived. A book “And Tango
Makes Three” (by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson, Simon &
Shuster, 2005) about two male penguins raising an “adopted” bird, based on
fact, is creating controversy in an The animated kids’ Australian film “Happy Feet” (Warner Bros/Village Roadshow, 2006, dir. George Miller, 98 min) about an Emporer Penguin who dances to find a mate when he cannot
sing, was widely said (by others) to be a parable about non-conformists who
challenge prejudice with objectivity and performance. It took a while for me
to get to it, and it is quite a spectacle (beginning with a “Zarathustra”
shot of the sun, moon, and Winged Migration,
from Sony Pictures Classics, Galatee and Studio
Canal, a stunning documentary by Jacques Perrin, is a stunning documentary of
bird migrations, in the tradition of the Disney “true life adventure”
documentaries from the 1950s (The Living Desert, The Vanishing Prairie),
except that this film shows the birds in more on-location settings all over
the world than in any other film in history. The photography is ravishing,
almost like 3-D without glasses, reminding one of VistaVision
(the credits said TechnoVision) but why wasn’t the
full 2.3 to 1 anamorphic lens used? The film stock provided more subtle
colors than any I jave ever seen. Stunning shots
include the geese landing in a Russian steel mill (with one getting stuck),
and another down bird consumed by crabs on a West African Coast. The
formations are stunning, and it is well known that they provide additional
lift for birds and conserve energy, a model that provides discussion for
corporate team handbook seminars in the workplace. There is a shot of Grizzly Man (2005, Lions Gate, also TV with the
Discovery Channel, dir. Werner Herzog) is a documentary about Timothy
Treadwell, who lived every summer for years among the grizzly bears on the
Katmai area of Alaska, and was killed by an older grizzly with his girl
friend Amie Huguenard in October 2003. He was very
much a loner most of the time, and had an almost religious belief in the
significance of the natural world that he tried to save. This is more a
character study about Timothy than about the animals. (He also befriends
foxes.) His death comes in the fall, when older grizzlies are just plain
hungry. The grizzly, it seems, is not like us; he has no moral sense beyond
satisfying his own needs first. (Sometimes that is like us! So that’s a
cultural thing.) He talks to himself a lot, almost in falsetto, and at one
point speculates on wanting to be gay. Into the Wild (2007, Paramount Vantage / Deep Blue (2003, Miramax / BBC, dir. Andy Byatt, Alastair Fothergill, 91 min, UK, G) with Pierce Brosnan narrating the English version, is a meditation on
“blue” rather than “green” with fantastic shots of sea life. There is a scene
where orcas separate a blue whale calf from its mother and hunt it down.
There is a penguin scene echoing the “March” movie. Toward the end, the movie
migrates to the deep, with a world of tubeworms and incandescent life, with
the biggest migrations on the planet. The movie shows the 7-mile deep
Atlantic Trench. Encounters at the End of the World (2008, ThinkFilm
/ Discovery Channel, dir. Werner Herzog, 112 min, |
Related reviews: Perfect Storm, The Shipping News Gerry, Open Water Penguins of the Antarctic |
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