Post by joekiddlouischama on Mar 23, 2019 9:16:22 GMT
I viewed Arctic twice. On the first occasion, I deemed it "pretty good" (meaning above-average), and after my second screening, I considered the film "good," meaning that I liked it somewhat better. On neither occasion did I find Arctic especially engrossing, but I always appreciated it, and on my second viewing, I thought that it certainly built momentum over its second half. As Nora indicated, the film is almost akin to a silent movie in terms of dialogue, and the nearly wordless performances by Mads Mikkelsen and a largely comatose Maria Thelma Smáradóttir feel real and sincere. Arctic prospers from its realistic visual detail, its Icelandic location shooting, its long shots and still frames, and also its oblique themes: the paper-thin margin between life and death, the random reversals of fortune, and the sheer, unsentimental human will that the film chronicles. It is an existential story of resilience and perseverance, of human loyalty and self-doubt, of determination and helplessness, of control and its absence.
While a good film, the question might be why Arctic is not the classic or "very good" movie that it could have been given its strengths in cinematography, editing, acting, theme, and visceral realism. After my second viewing, I felt that the answer may be that the film fails to create an especially strong sense of real time. At a running length of 97 minutes, Arctic perhaps should have been longer, allowing for a greater sense of real time and reflection. Such a decision may have seemed counterintuitive given the movie's relative dearth of action, conventional narrative contours, and dialogue, and I certainly cannot say that a longer duration would have worked. But it is a film that should feel more like an epic saga, a resonance that All Is Lost (J.C. Chandor, 2013) and The Revenant (Alejandro Iñárritu, 2015) manage to achieve. Those movies featured longer running lengths (much longer in the case of The Revenant) and more reflection, and Arctic seems to come up a little short in comparison. But it does offer a pure, honest, and unvarnished kind of filmmaking that is deeply appreciable even if it is not always engrossing.
By the way, the writer-director, Joe Penna, is ironically from Brazil ...
While a good film, the question might be why Arctic is not the classic or "very good" movie that it could have been given its strengths in cinematography, editing, acting, theme, and visceral realism. After my second viewing, I felt that the answer may be that the film fails to create an especially strong sense of real time. At a running length of 97 minutes, Arctic perhaps should have been longer, allowing for a greater sense of real time and reflection. Such a decision may have seemed counterintuitive given the movie's relative dearth of action, conventional narrative contours, and dialogue, and I certainly cannot say that a longer duration would have worked. But it is a film that should feel more like an epic saga, a resonance that All Is Lost (J.C. Chandor, 2013) and The Revenant (Alejandro Iñárritu, 2015) manage to achieve. Those movies featured longer running lengths (much longer in the case of The Revenant) and more reflection, and Arctic seems to come up a little short in comparison. But it does offer a pure, honest, and unvarnished kind of filmmaking that is deeply appreciable even if it is not always engrossing.
By the way, the writer-director, Joe Penna, is ironically from Brazil ...