Antarctica: A Year on Ice (2013)

You won't be disappointed!

Sadly Over-hyped

Expected more

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

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.

Documentaries are definitely not for everyone. It takes a certain patience, curiosity and contemplation to watch the world living its ordinary life, just like it's the case with soap operas or reality shows that try to imitate the real life in vitro. And i consider myself lucky to be able to enjoy the documentaries, since it really is a unique genre that offers some unique experience to a viewer.Honestly, i didn't expect too much from this film. In my experience with nature documentaries, one has to be both really big and really professional to shoot a truly decent documentary, that is why i absolutely adore the BBC films with David Attenborough, moderately accept the Discovery and National Geographic products and am outright sceptical about everything else. And this movie had that amateur indie feeling that in 99 cases out of 100 means that the outcome is bound to be mediocre.To my big (and pleasant) surprise, this was that very "1 out of 100" exception. Yes, the movie is basically made by a single man, a time lapse photography enthusiast who spent several years working on a polar base in Antarctica. But the fact that we are being introduced to that vast and secluded icy world by someone who's not a stranger to it himself makes it a different experience entirely. Anthony "Antz" Powell doesn't simply look for some "fancy stuff" to film and later present to us. He actually lives through all these moments, and we are allowed to witness them, which makes this film a rather intimate experience.It may sound silly, but another great thing about this movie is that it's not just about Antarctica. Though it does share with us the amazing beauty of its pristine nature, it doesn't sell Antarctica as the main and only star. After all, this huge frozen world can be equally beautiful and depressing. Instead, we look at this continent and the life that managed to bind itself to it through the eyes of the fellow workers, people who spent months, or even years, there doing their job and whose impression of Antarctica and the way humans interact with it is the most honest and true.It's probably not very groundbreaking, but illustrating life in Antarctica with simple people's lives and experiences makes this movie really heartfelt. It is a documentaty, but you invest yourself emotionally into it, you care about the people shown in it, follow their stories, connect to their problems, feelings and dreams. This removes restraints between you and the objects shown in the movie, making you more than just an impassive spectator, almost like a friend to those people. You do not simply consume facts or imagery, as the so-so documentaries offer you to do, you actually live through them.Maybe i'm fooling myself, but 'Antarctica: A Year on Ice' gave me a bit of a feeling of actually spending a year there. And what it is if not a sign that the film did its job well?

There are several films that take place in Antarctica; however only a couple have focused on what it is like to actually live there. Like in Werner Herzog's documentary 'Encounters at the End of the World', the audience is introduced to several members of the support staff at McMurdo Station, Antarctica. However in Antarctica: A Year on Ice, we're not just seeing a snippet of time in their lives on a given day. We're seeing how they progress through an entire year – how they are affected by the 24 hours of summer sunlight, the unending darkness of a harsh winter, and the isolation. All of this is presented in the context of Nature, her ebbs and flows, power and beauty. Over the years Anthony Powell has perfected his ability to capture and condense images of Nature in a manner that allows the audience to appreciate her creations in a timely manner. Nature is just as much of a character in the film as the others; although one could argue a more visually stunning one. Where else in the world can you see auroras dancing over a backdrop of the Milky Way, a storm so powerful that you can barely close the door, or get the real poop on penguins?By the end of the film, Anthony Powell has led the audience through a year in Antarctica as experienced by the people who have been there and done that. It's much more than just a glimpse. It describes both an environment and a culture that very few are lucky enough and fortunate enough to experience first hand.

Watching Antarctica: A Year on Ice, you'll run out of superlatives to describe the experience. Then you'll start using them all again, in combination, and you'll still be unable to adequately describe what you've seen.This masterpiece of a film was made by Anthony Powell, a Satellite Communications Technician working out of McMurdo Base, the United States station in Antarctica. It's obvious that the film was born of a deep passion for the place, which he and his wife Christine have returned to, whenever possible, year after year.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 see? Powell began by taking photographs, recording video, documenting life on the base, the idiosyncrasies of those who work there, and the beauty of the landscape. Over the years, whenever not working on the communications equipment he is responsible for, he's been working on techniques for gathering images in unusual and hostile conditions, often refining or even creating his own gear in order to capture the experience of living in Antarctica for a year.The result is brilliant; by turns funny, terrifying and heartbreaking - but always awe-inspiring. It's not about the cinematography, (although the photography is frequently top-notch, and some of the time-lapse sequences are stunning,) and other than a few matter-of-fact mentions, nor does Powell delve into political or environmental debate. His purpose here is showing the audience what Antarctica is LIKE: how it feels to work there, what it really looks like, what happens there. His success in this endeavour is as superlative as the film.See Antartctica: A Year on Ice in the cinema - on the biggest screen you can - and then just wonder at it.