Arctic (Joe Pena, 2018) Iceland

Reviewed by Kaio Farkouh.

The following review may contain spoilers.

Directed by Joe Penna, the movie premiered last year at the Cannes Film Festival. After directing some shorts and tv shows, this is Joe’s first feature film, where he co-writes with Ryan Morrison, which also helped Joe in his past films, and Joe also directed. Starring Mads Mikkelsen (“The Hunt”, “Doctor Strange”) and Maria Thelma Smáradóttir in a survival story.

The movie starts right away with Mads Mikkelsen lost in the middle of nowhere, we do not know anything about him, even his name. After a following action, Mads character needs to decide whether, he will stay and live this lonely life, or if he will risk his life in order to survive and have his life back.

Different from other movies like “127 Hours” or “The Revenant”, the director give us a different point of view, this movie is only about survive, different from characters like James Franco in “127 Hours” or Leonardo DiCaprio in “The Revenant”, where of only survive they go on a journey of self-discovering. There is no use of flashbacks, to give us more information about our main character, it is a cold, literally, movie about his willingness to survive and live.

The first hour of the movie give us no sense of any threat, however Mads Mikkelsen give us one of his best performances. With a beautiful cinematography with open shots, we see how lost is our main character. Amazing open scenes of the snow and no sign of life or people. Just Mads Mikkelsen and the cold. The movie has very few dialogues, but because of Mads Mikkelsen strong performance all we need are the close-ups to see the feelings of our main character. You can feel his agony or even his happiness when he eats or find something. Probably the best performance of his career.

The following paragraph contains information about the plot.

At the beginning of the movie we are teased by a possible confrontation with an animal, and I thought the pace of the movie would start picking up a little bit, however it does not. There is not really a threat in the movie if not the when our main character decides to leave his base in order to look for a safe place. And then again, he faces the animal, which by the way, I could not tell if it was CGI or real, but that’s it.

“Arctic” has a slow first act, with no sense of threat whatsoever to introduce to our main character, and show his ability to survive. However, with a strong performance by Mads Mikkelsen and amazing shots, the pace of the movie picks up after the first hour and give us a sense to be thrilled. Joe Pena does a good job on his first long feature and it will be interesting to see where he goes from now on.

 

“Arctic” trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5aD9ppoQIo

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Published:
02.22.19 / 2pm
Category:
Films