How I Ended This Summer (***)

The title sounds like this should be a coming-of-age story, and in a way it is, even if the main character is a twentysomething intern at an arctic observation post. His only companion is an older man with a wife and child back home in Russia. For quite a while, writer-director Aleksei Popogrebsky mostly seems to be giving us a sense of place. No pun intended, but the pace is kind of glacial. Time passes slowly in this place, and presumably the viewer is meant to feel that way. Popogrebsky gives us long takes of characters moving across the bleak landscape. Filming at an actual polar station, he uses time-lapse photography to show the light change, but not fade, in the arctic summer. A home viewer may be tempted to fast-forward (or turn off) the movie, but in the last half there is suspense, despair, and irony. The plot involves a bit of deception by the younger man, and unintended consequences. Much of the photography is striking.

IMDB link

viewed at Ritz 5 [Philadelphia Film Festival] and reviewed 10/18/10

Arctic Tale (***1/2)

This is an interesting sort of hybrid movie, though it could be mistaken for a March of the Penguins-style documentary. Directors Adam Ravetch and Sarah Robertson set out to film the Arctic, but not to make a feature film. Over the course of 15 years, their footage began to suggest a storyline about a walrus and a polar bear, and they eventually got the backing of National Geographic. I had to watch the disclaimer at the end to be sure it wasn’t actually a documentary, but, according to Robertson, it wouldn’t have been feasible to follow the same individual animals year after year. However, that is what we appear to see, a story of what happens to one polar bear cub named Nanu and one walrus calf named Seela.

A friendly sounding Queen Latifah tells the tale. The narration written for her occasionally gets cute, as when it refers to a polar bear “boot camp” that Nanu’s mother puts her through, but for the most part is helpfully explanatory and easy to follow. Probably I could have done without Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family” playing over one sequence of mother and daughter, but that’s as close as the movie gets to Disney fare. We don’t hear voices come out of the animals’ mouths, and we see the realities of predation in a way that animated movies about animals tend to dance around. In fact, a scene where a couple of walruses fight for their lives is among the most awesome footage here.

And make no mistake. The footage is frequently stunning. The story makes it family friendly, but anyone with even a mild interest in the subject will be enthralled. The subtext of the film is the effect of climate change on the animals of the arctic. Although it wasn’t their original intent to make a movie about global warming, the filmmakers’ observations turned it into one. For walruses and polar bears alike, the less-intense winters mean longer trips across open seas with no solid ice on which to alight. (Incidentally, Al Gore’s daughter Kristen is one of the three credited writers.) You don’t need to watch Arctic Tale as an environmentalist. The natural beauty and its inherent drama are enough reason.

IMDB link

reviewed 8/5/07