Antarctica: A Year on Ice

This film by Anthony Powell shows us what it is like to spend a year in Anarctica. The winters are killer! The temperature goes to -40 degrees and winds blow at 100 mph. The sun disappears for 4 months at McMurdo Station. This film is not about scientists. It is about the people who work at the base and keep it functional. We get inside their heads. There are folks who fell in love with the place and can't seem to get enough of it. There are others who wonder if they did the right thing by coming here. I actually found myself wanting to spend some time in Anarctica even while knowing it will never happen. The stars of the southern sky are compelling and, of course, everybody loves penguins!

Powell's time-lapse cinematography, which seems to take up about half the running time, is astonishing - eerie, hypnotic and beautiful. This is a world very few will ever know firsthand - or want to - but Powell certainly reveals its beauties. The film is meant to be a chronicle, and there is no narrative per se. The last third of the film drags a bit here and there and some of the interviews get a tad repetitive. Those who like this will find Werner Herzog's "Encounters at the End of the World" an interesting contrast. Werner Herzog's focus is less on the place but the filmmaker's fascination with the people who go Antartica and their reasons for wanting to be there.

As someone with a longtime interest in polar exploration, I found this documentary enjoyable but not particularly special. I got halfway through, up to the point where Powell films a young seal, obviously lost and plaintively crying, crawling around by the base in apparent confusion. Presumably it has wandered far off course and is doomed to starve to death. Powell primly informs us that the rules forbid interfering with wildlife, then immediately loses interest and switches to a crew member complaining about the difficulty of keeping up with his family via email.

I don't know the circumstances, and I don't know precisely what small measures might have been taken to aid the stricken animal (offering it some food? Carrying it to the water? Putting it out of its misery?), but when it comes to this sort of decision -- providing some small humanitarian aid versus adhering to some idealized principle of "scientific detachment" (in the midst of a settlement constructed by humans) -- I think his refusal to help is needlessly cruel.

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.

A documentary made through the lenses of Anthony Powell, photographer who spent many years in Antarctica lead you to the incredible journey to the world we really don't know much. The author describe just a portion of this amazing place over one year of time, combining short interviews, wonderful time lapse photography and just a glimpses of ordinary life of the small population that works on Antarctica. The movie opened many fascinating phenomena, from the mighty storms and winds, cold, 4 months in constant daylight and than darkness and the ways people adapts to those conditions, (T3 Syndrome, for example) which can really be a separate topics for more than one documentary.

Although the movie is not perfect, by my opinion, as it lack some inside to the geography of the place and at least some facts about the conditions there, it basically opened many more questions form me. This movie and its amazing topic with conditions where it was filmed basically don't give you the space to moan about imperfection that surely exists. Instead, it make you wondering about all what is seen, with a feeling that you would like to see much more.