Europa Report (***1/4)

Using a quasi-documentary structure to dissect the aftermath of a voyage to Jupiter, this is sci-fi that, like 2009’s Moon, emphasizes space as a lonely, quiet, place. (The movie pays tribute to another inspiration, 2001, by briefly featuring Strauss’s The Blue Danube, prominently featured in that classic, as the crew boards the spaceship.) Taking its inspiration from recent evidence that Europa, one of the planet’s moons, has an icy surface with, possibly, water underneath, the film follows a four-man, two-woman crew as they travel there in the hope of finding evidence of life. The setting seems to be the current time, or close to it.

As the story begins, it is six months into the voyage, and the crew has lost its communication with earth. The idea is that the public had been following the voyage, but only now has information about what happened after that been declassified. A spokeswoman for the space agency on the ground narrates some of the story, told in flashbacks and flash-forwards that are generally not confusing. One of the crew tells other parts of the story. Is she the only survivor? What happens on Europa? I think you can probably guess, in broad strokes, if you assume that if the crew finds nothing, or all die immediately, there’s not much of a story. Still, this is an intelligent approach to sci-fi that seems fairly realistic.

Director Sebastián Corderouses split screens and typical subtitles to give the impression that we are looking at footage from video feeds, but he only does this for some of the movie. As for the actors, they’re fine. Most likely to be recognizable are Embeth Davidtz as the Earth-bound spokeswoman and Michael Nyqvist, star of the original The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but the characters are not the movie’s strong suit. The visuals are not flashy, but seem believable, and the score by Bear McCreary is effectively moody.

IMDb link

viewed 8/15/13 7:35 at Ritz Bourse and posted 8/15/13

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

Golden Door (***1/4)

This movie is a story of immigration, told by following a peasant who travels to Ellis Island with his mother and sons. Salvatore is a widower, living in a craggy village in Sicily; like every other Italian we see in the movie, he speaks no English. He is illiterate. With (literal) visions of money growing on trees, he heads off to America, envisioning immense vegetables growing in the fertile soil. But these fantasies are as romantic as the film gets; in many ways what it made me think of was a sort of anti-Titanic. In that film, poor boy Leo DeCaprio stows away; we don’t see him stuffed like a sardine into the cots provided to the third-class passengers here. We also don’t see what would have awaited him had he made it to Ellis Island. He’d have been examined for defects mental and physical, and deported if found wanting. The Kate Winslet figure, an Englishwoman mysteriously traveling on a boat full of Italians, is played by Charlotte Gainsbourg. Well-dressed, carrying herself with a slightly regal air, and traveling alone, she’s the object of much speculation among the other passengers. But she too will be turned away unless she can find someone to marry her.

And there I’ve told you 80% of the plot. If a fast-paced story or conventional romance is what you’re looking for, this movie may bore you. Precise detail, from the smudged clothing and dark fingernails of the emigrants to their assembly-line processing at the end of their trip, is the movie’s forte. Writer-director Emanuele Crialese spent a year researching Ellis Island and poring over the letters of the people who passed through there. He tells the story without sentimentality, though not without tenderness. The camera work eshews grand vistas for carefully framed shots of people in close quarters. There is only a little music. The result provides a better look than any text book at what it must have been like to leave everything you’ve known and go somewhere new, what it was like to become American.