Cannes Film Review: Mads Mikkelsen in Arctic
The movie Arctic was reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (Out of Competition), May 10th, 2018. Running time: 97 MIN.
PRODUCTION: An Armory Films, The Joker Films, XYZ Films production. Producers: Noah C. Haeussner, Christopher Lemole, Tim Zajaros. Executive producers: Martha De Laurentiis, Manu Gargi, Einar Thornsteinsson.
CREW:
- Director: Joe Penna
- Screenplay: Joe Penna, Ryan Morrison
- Camera (color, widescreen): Tómas Örn Tómasson
- Editor: Ryan Morrison
- Music: Joseph Trapanese
STARS:
- Mads Mikkelsen
- Maria Thelma Smáradôttir
Does Arctic keep you at the edge of your seat?
The result is that it takes a bit of time for Arctic to get rolling. It opens not with a bang but with an eerie plunge into the anti-dramatic post-crash void: Here is Mikkelsen’s lone survivor (he is never named), scratching at the black ground beneath the snow, the camera revealing that he has etched the giant letters “SOS” into the white tundra. The landscape is mostly flat, but in the distance are streaked gray mountains, and all we need to know about his predicament is explained by a small orange-and-white plane, of no marked nationality, that sits nearby, with one of its wings snapped in half. (He eats, sleeps, and takes storm refuge in the body of the plane.)
Okay, there is one hook — sort of. But as these things go, it’s notably minimalist. It would be hard to write a review and not mention it, but it’s a bit of a spoiler, so here goes: A helicopter appears in the distance, but it battles the same icy wind that Mikkelsen’s plane presumably did. The chopper crash-lands, leaving a survivor (played by the Icelandic actress Maria Thelma Smáradôttir). She is out cold, with a serious gash in her side. Mikkelsen staples the wound shut, and she remains, for more or less the entire film, in a state of mute semi-consciousness. She never becomes his “companion,” but her very existence teaches him something about existence.
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