Antarctica: A Year on Ice (2013)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

From my favorite movies..

Fantastic!

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

This is a beautifully filmed, amazing work of craftsmanship. If I ever meet someone that doesn't find this fascinating and involving, I don't think I'd want to be their friend.I'm sure the creator has glossed over a lot of the negative aspects of life in Antarctica: Scant showers, little fresh food, inevitable interpersonal conflicts, and just the doldrums of being cooped up for months, among other things.But upon seeing this, especially the gorgeous long nighttime time lapse shots of the skies and stars, and the wonderful, untainted pure landscapes, I actually started searching on how to sign up. True, I am one of those weird souls that likes fall and winter probably best. If I was a bit younger and had less ties, I might give it a go. If NASA ever seriously looks for people for a Mars colony, they should ask some of these understated, competent, calm old souls if they'd be interested in signing up.I am not the most environmentally conscious person. Sure, I recycle and try not to waste too much, but the thought that mankind might someday spoil this pristine area, one of the last on Earth, and one of the only places no war has ever been fought makes me slightly ill.I can't thank the people involved in this enough for adding a bit of beauty to the world or at least bringing it to mainstream attention. I hope there never will be any reality shows filmed there like the ones that have invaded Alaska, though if there were, I would find it hard to not watch them.

The Anthony Powell who made this documentary is not one of the famous artists by that name, not the great costume designer nor the author of the classic novels "Dance to the Music of Time". He's just another member of this generation's "me generation" followup, one of the millions of believers that the most trivial "human" story is intrinsically interesting. This pointless feature is not, it's just dull footage.As a kid living in Cleveland I enjoyed watching our local TV series Jim Doney's "Adventure Road", in which guests would narrate silent films they shot on world travels, just like the travelogue documentaries that still played as movies in film houses of the day. They provided an eye on the outside world, uneventful slices of life or distant places, pointless but handy time-killers.Powell tells us this took him 10 years to make and he fails to bring to the project an offbeat or even original point-of-view (what our greatest contemporary documentarist Werner Herzog always tries to do), just giving a banal slice of life of folks who choose to live out the long, dark winter of living on the Antarctic continent. No sense of adventure or even danger/dramatics intrudes on the calm, tedious progression of scenes. In common with fiction cinema there is a story credit, but no actual story.I have always felt that documentaries need to be taken off their pedestal and judged by the same (or at least roughly analogous) parameters as fiction features, since the illusion and pretense of objectivity is a myth. Whether fact or fiction the filmmaker puts his or her personal stamp on what the feature is trying to say, and most docs are scripted, either beforehand or in post-production. In the wake of the revolutionary Godfrey Reggio films like "Koyaanisqatsi", a philosophical bent has permeated many docs, but this one is frankly stupid - the final line during the film proper is by a young misogynist who compares the "square world" (that means us, in the audience) to cattle -not the Hitchcockian view of those necessary evils, his actors, but rather as the guy voices over "just moving from place to place". At this point, Powell ends the show not with a striking vista of the Antarctic continent's steely beauty, but rather another of many cornball time-lapse shots of a frenetic metropolis at night, the sort of image that typifies "Koyaanisqatsi". Yes, we poor humans are in a rut, scurrying around in a pointless existence. No more pointless than the self-shut-ins who revel in living out the endless night of Antarctic winter in lonely fashion, even complaining (as we see in the film underlined) when new folk arrive sporting dreaded sun tans yet, to invade their privacy and solitude.With such dull stuff to watch my mind wandered and I thought of a movie (fiction for now but someday documentary in nature) about life in an expatriate Earth colony on Mars or perhaps a moon of Jupiter, as presented by some earnest fellow like Powell. If it was a sci-fi entertainment there would be drama and an inevitable existential crisis threatening the colony with extinction, or even bug-eyed monsters attacking. But in "Antartica" nothing happens, and because it is cloaked in the form of a documentary it passes the low-low bar as quasi- entertainment or educational content. Even the most minimalist of fiction directors (think of Lonergan and the stupid "award-winning" Manchester by the Sea) would have trouble getting away with that.

This is an absolutely incredible visual and auditory experience. The scenery is close to what one would have seen in the Lord of The Rings films, and the music seems like it's from Lord of The Rings as well. It's almost as though the globe shifted and New Zealand overlapped with Antarctica, complete with similar production companies.For some reason, the narrative is very difficult to follow. For about fifteen seconds someone is being interviewed, and then another person is being interviewed for about five seconds. Then there are some time lapse penguins and some time lapse views of mountains with heroic music. It's almost like watching a large number of commercials end to end.After a while the fascination wears off. In some ways I started to feel like I was trapped in a camera that refused to function correctly. I never really got a chance to find out about anyone or their experience in depth. There isn't really any sense of character development. Plenty of descriptions of things but not too much much reflection of how it feels.If you're looking for something to watch that is visually stunning, this is probably as good as it gets. If you're interested in finding out what it's like to spend a year in Antarctica there are some excellent written accounts from explorers in the past that describe a lot more of what it was really like, minus the comfort of email.

After watching Antarctica: A Year on Ice, you'll run out of superlatives to describe the experience, I still have a hard time explaining my experience over there due that people that have not been there can't really get it. But this Movie will give you a glimpse of the experience one have or will have if you get to be there.But really How do you share your thoughts about a place which defies description? a place vital to our planet, but which the vast majority will never go there.Why The title? After a few Combat tours one does lose some Humanity but working in Antarctica it help me deal wit the war demons. It was my experience but each person is differentEventually I may go back wit my wife :D