Owen Gleiberman skrifar um Arctic í Variety og segir hana grípandi í einfaldleika sínum.
Í umsögn segir meðal annars:
“Arctic,” a notably quiet and captivating slow-build adventure film, starring Mads Mikkelsen as a researcher-explorer who has crash-landed in the frozen wilderness, is the latest example of a genre we know in our bones, one that feels so familiar it’s almost comforting. It’s another solo-survival movie, one more tale of a shipwrecked soul that derives its spirit and design from the mythic fable of the form, “Robinson Crusoe.”
Og ennfremur:
The hook of “Arctic,” which was shot in Iceland, is that it has none of those things. It’s the first feature directed by Joe Penna, the protean Brazilian video auteur who became a sensation on YouTube, so you might expect it to be made with a touch of 21st-century flash. On the contrary: Penna tells this tale of self-rescue with a plainly carpentered austerity that makes it feel, at times, like you’re seeing an ice-cap remake of “A Man Escaped.” There are no cut corners, no overly blatant only-in-the-movies gambits. Mikkelsen’s stranded pilot has little to rely on beyond his will, so we feel at every step that he could truly be us.
Penna works in what you might call a gratifyingly prosaic style. He doesn’t wow you (though the film, in its level way, is elegantly shot). But he doesn’t cheat you, either, so you come to trust the gravity of his nuts-and-bolts storytelling. The movie is built around the gruff mystique of Mads Mikkelsen, who never betrays a hint of showiness. Mikkelsen’s height and stalwart presence fill the frame, and his face looks inward and outward at the same time; it’s tense, focused, ravaged, not afraid to be a little blank. He speaks just a few words (of English), yet his rapt desperation consumes the viewer. At one point he has to pull a heavy load up an unexpected rocky hill, and he can’t do it; the character isn’t strong enough. The polar bear shows up again, this time at closer range, and watching this superb scene I realized how much I’ve come to expect the hidden reassurance of digital imagery. If this polar bear is digital, it certainly fooled me.
Og einnig:
Five years ago, “All Is Lost” premiered at Cannes to deserved acclaim. But when it opened later that fall, the film was a noteworthy commercial disappointment (it made just $6 million domestic), and the awards magic never happened for Robert Redford. I think I understood why. “All Is Lost” was ingeniously made, and a true experience, yet the stark fact is that it was slow. “Arctic,” as effective as it is, may face a similar challenge (at least in the U.S.), precisely because of the rough-hewn, trudging-through-the-tundra, one-step-at-a-time honesty with which Joe Penna works. The movie, in its indie way, is the anti-“Cast Away.” Yet that’s what’s good and, finally, moving about it. It lets survival look like the raw experience it is.
Sjá nánar hér: Cannes Film Review: Mads Mikkelsen in ‘Arctic’
