I had a choice between seeing this and "300," and I chose this.
Its because there is a certain kind of movie story based on nobility. There are only a few ways to do it. All of them abstract reality in a dramatic direction. But you know, war isn't inherently dramatic. Deprivation is. Struggling against nature is. Being incredibly flawed as a result of cultural blindness could be, depending on how it is handled.
The story here is of two teams competing to be the first to the south pole. For reasons unexplored here, it really mattered in the popular imagination who got there first. It was a matter of national pride, akin to whether a team wearing your emblem wins a game. Socially, I think all the steam went out of the explorer hero with the man-on-the-moon adventure where the feat really was a demonstration of national strength, capability, will. But in those days as recently as a hundred years ago, national pride was bound in the last generation of individuals who could be called explorers.
The Brits were particularly keen on this expedition because it was exploration largely divorced from imperial landgrabs. As with the moon shot, it was wrapped in scientific clothing as a thin excuse. The events in this movie happened before the first world war and the film was made after the second, when England was a different place, eager to seize on old models of what made then Brits. And because they are highly introspective, they'd want to look at their own foibles together with their strengths.
The facts are damning. The Norweigian fellow got there first. He made every decision matter, and he made all the right decisions. The British team made huge errors and miscalculations. They did have bad luck with weather, but it has to be noted that Amundsen (the Norweigian) had precisely the same weather to deal with.
What we see it remarkable. All the mistakes are seen only as the trigger for noble response, because after all is done, the English mind likes to think of its heroes as gentlemen who responded to adversity as gentlemen. And gentlemen they were; they chose not to rely on dogs, instead pulled the sleds with their own bodies for hundreds of miles. The reason? Dogs are our friends. Amundsen used dogs exclusively for transport, eating them along the way. The Brits carried books and other tokens of civilization, a huge burden while the Norweigian cut and cut and cut to the bone.
It has to be noted that the party froze only 11 miles from a cache of stores, so even 2 pounds over 1800 miles would have mattered. In the final legs where ounces mattered and they were tossing items from the sleds, they kept 30 pounds of "interesting rocks."
The film turns all this into a celebration of Englishness. One man was injured before beginning the final, disastrous leg. He could have said something and been replaced, but he didn't. His act alone damned the party. But we remember him as a gent, because at the end he politely informed his partners that he was going out of the huddled tent into a blizzard "and would be gone a while," never to be seen again.
But the most gentlemanly affect was Scott's writing in the journals as he knew doom approached. All the men wrote dear letters; they and the journals were found later in the tent with the frozen bodies. What we have of the story, we have from those writings, which we see written throughout the movie. The device is amplified by us hearing narration from the three last members of the party.
If you are interested in how film affects national identify, forming and reflecting it, shaping history and remembrance, and you want to escape war pictures which, so far are dull with few exceptions, then try this. Its the gentle thing to do.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
Its because there is a certain kind of movie story based on nobility. There are only a few ways to do it. All of them abstract reality in a dramatic direction. But you know, war isn't inherently dramatic. Deprivation is. Struggling against nature is. Being incredibly flawed as a result of cultural blindness could be, depending on how it is handled.
The story here is of two teams competing to be the first to the south pole. For reasons unexplored here, it really mattered in the popular imagination who got there first. It was a matter of national pride, akin to whether a team wearing your emblem wins a game. Socially, I think all the steam went out of the explorer hero with the man-on-the-moon adventure where the feat really was a demonstration of national strength, capability, will. But in those days as recently as a hundred years ago, national pride was bound in the last generation of individuals who could be called explorers.
The Brits were particularly keen on this expedition because it was exploration largely divorced from imperial landgrabs. As with the moon shot, it was wrapped in scientific clothing as a thin excuse. The events in this movie happened before the first world war and the film was made after the second, when England was a different place, eager to seize on old models of what made then Brits. And because they are highly introspective, they'd want to look at their own foibles together with their strengths.
The facts are damning. The Norweigian fellow got there first. He made every decision matter, and he made all the right decisions. The British team made huge errors and miscalculations. They did have bad luck with weather, but it has to be noted that Amundsen (the Norweigian) had precisely the same weather to deal with.
What we see it remarkable. All the mistakes are seen only as the trigger for noble response, because after all is done, the English mind likes to think of its heroes as gentlemen who responded to adversity as gentlemen. And gentlemen they were; they chose not to rely on dogs, instead pulled the sleds with their own bodies for hundreds of miles. The reason? Dogs are our friends. Amundsen used dogs exclusively for transport, eating them along the way. The Brits carried books and other tokens of civilization, a huge burden while the Norweigian cut and cut and cut to the bone.
It has to be noted that the party froze only 11 miles from a cache of stores, so even 2 pounds over 1800 miles would have mattered. In the final legs where ounces mattered and they were tossing items from the sleds, they kept 30 pounds of "interesting rocks."
The film turns all this into a celebration of Englishness. One man was injured before beginning the final, disastrous leg. He could have said something and been replaced, but he didn't. His act alone damned the party. But we remember him as a gent, because at the end he politely informed his partners that he was going out of the huddled tent into a blizzard "and would be gone a while," never to be seen again.
But the most gentlemanly affect was Scott's writing in the journals as he knew doom approached. All the men wrote dear letters; they and the journals were found later in the tent with the frozen bodies. What we have of the story, we have from those writings, which we see written throughout the movie. The device is amplified by us hearing narration from the three last members of the party.
If you are interested in how film affects national identify, forming and reflecting it, shaping history and remembrance, and you want to escape war pictures which, so far are dull with few exceptions, then try this. Its the gentle thing to do.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.