Kon-Tiki (***)

I am almost new to the story of Thor Heyerdahl, the Norwegian who in 1947 led a small crew in a 5000-mile voyage across the Pacific in a balsa-wood raft. While vaguely familiar with the tale, I had not read Heyerdahl’s bestselling account nor seen the documentary that won the Oscar in 1951. What I liked about the story is that it’s an adventure, a nearly extinct genre that is distinct from the thriller, which accents suspense, or the action movie, which emphasizes movement. The adventure has some suspense and some action, but above all prizes wonder, a sense that the world is a place larger than the imagination.

The best part of this movie (whose directors, Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg, filmed English- and Norwegian-language versions simultaneously), is the beginning. Heyerdahl (Pål Sverre Hagen) is the sort of old-fashioned…adventurer (there is no better word) who remains irresistible, a more realistic Indiana Jones figure. Having spent a decade in Polynesia, he conceived of following the methods of the ancients to prove that South Americans were the ones to settle the South Sea Islands. Conveyed in pithy fashion, Heyerdahl’s optimistic determinism is winsome. Aboard ship (or raft), which is most of the movie, Heyerdahl/Hagen shares the screen with a bunch of other characters who don’t have much time to differentiate. On any movie like this, you’re sure to get scenes that involve weather, scenes that involve sea beasts, scenes that involve arguments among men, and plain old scenery. That’s all here, and while the photography is captivating (on land and sea), the rest seems as expected, and the ending is nothing, essentially the men laughing crazy laughter as they hit the beach. Do real men laugh crazy laughter in this way upon arriving safely after an arduous journey?


As feature films about long sea voyages go, I’ll go with the recent fiction story Life of Pi, or The African Queen, going back a lot further, but still, bring back the adventure movie, I say.

IMDb link

viewed 5/29/13 7:30 pm and reviewed 5/29/13