Chasing Ice

 
CHASING ICE           B                     

USA  (80 mi)  2012  d:  Jeff Orlowski

Much of this plays out like a child’s curiosity about the planets, wanting to know more about this world around us, becoming more deeply involved in further scientific exploration until James Balog appears, one of the world renowned environmental photographers working for National Geographic.  Initially he was fascinated how the ocean waves splashed along shoreline icebergs in Iceland that were only three or four feet high, or shooting ice under a night sky, enamored by the beauty of it all.  But eventually this becomes a provocative counterpoint to those who still insist Global Warming is a myth.  Balog targets glaciers around the world, using 36 time-lapse cameras shooting 16 different glaciers over the course of several years, shooting once every half-hour during daylight hours in remote locations of Alaska, Bolivia, Canada, France, Greenland, Iceland, Nepal, Switzerland, and the Rocky Mountains, producing nearly a million pictures over the course of three years, offering irrefutable evidence that melting glaciers around the world have retreated in the last 10 years distances that it took them 100 years prior to that, all attributed to the rapid rise of the planet’s temperature, which has been traced by scientists to the impact of humans releasing carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide emissions into the atmosphere.  According to Balog, geological activity is usually measured in the hundreds of years, but in our lifetime we are currently living in a period of profoundly active geological change, as there has been such an explosion in the massive shifting of ice formations, literally elevating the sea level, where this is having an impact in oceanic weather patterns, causing greater natural weather disasters, as the water level is higher closer to the shorelines, creating more destructive flooding.  The enormous release of Arctic water from the melting polar icecaps is documented by Balog and a small camera crew as they literally hike to the sources of greatest melting. 

Balog initiated his Extreme Ice Survey project in March 2007, setting up cameras in some of the most difficult to reach places on the planet, only to return 5 months later to discover uniform malfunctions in the equipment, eventually changing to something less complex and more durable, which has been working perfectly ever since.  While the individual photos showing before and after shots are impressive, nothing shows the devastating magnitude of the change like videos that compress years into seconds, showing mountains of ice disappearing before our eyes.  But in order to get these shots, Balog and his carefully chosen international team of younger field coordinators, Adam Levinter and Svavar Jónatansson, had to travel by helicopter, canoe, and dog sled across several continents, setting up tents and surviving the harshest elements, before scaling the heights of mammoth icebergs, then traversing down into the cracks where the water is furiously flowing, Chasing Ice (2012) Clip - YouTube (1:43).  Ice in the Arctic could disappear entirely during the summer months by 2100, or even sooner.  What’s different and harder to predict about this climate change is the effects are no longer a result of natural geological behavior, but entirely man made, the results of which are completely unpredictable, as they’ve never happened before.  In the past 100 years, the atmosphere has accumulated 40% more carbon dioxide than anytime over the past one million years.  While these numbers have been trotted out before, it’s hard for people to comprehend without seeing evidence first hand, which is exactly what this film documents.  Anyone who’s been to Glacier National Park in Montana knows that of the 150 glaciers found in the park a century ago, only 27 remain, where it’s predicted all will be gone by 2030, where Balog suggests they’ll have to rename the park to Glacierless Park.

Despite his enduring intensity, the weakest part of the film focuses on Balog himself, offering personal details the audience could do without, as what’s most spectacular is the incredible imagery obtained from this project.  If traversing across the barren polar icecaps was not daring enough, capturing some of the most astonishing footage, where in 20 years one glacier shown shrunk in vertical height by more than 1200 feet, or the size of the Empire State building.  Balog truly outdid himself by sending his team to camp out in front of a glacier for several weeks, where literally nothing happened at all for the first few weeks, as these guys just stared into the ice all day waiting for something to happen, culminating in the most astounding footage of all when they capture 75 minutes of a spectacular glacial collapse, actually captured on nine different cameras, where the ice literally implodes upon itself in a domino effect, giant chunks toppling into the sea, a unique experience never seen before where ice larger than the size of Manhattan literally disappears before our eyes.  While this is visually breathtaking, the most extensive visual record of glaciers ever recorded, there’s also an element of sadness and loss, as this ice isn’t renewing itself, where once it’s gone it’s gone, a devastating loss to the planet.  In the future, the rising sea levels can only lead to displaced millions living in settlements near the ocean shorelines, and present levels of carbon dioxide are expected to double within the next 50 years, raising the average global temperature by about 3 degrees.  As some may argue there are currently glaciers expanding, but scientists in the Yukon found 4 expanding, about 50 have disappeared completely, and more than a hundred are diminishing rapidly, so the evidence suggests this is nothing like a natural process.  A man made problem requires a man made solution, where centuries after Darwin, rather than embracing science, we're still arguing about evolution.  Scientists remain the most distraught over the impending emergency, while the public remains relatively unconcerned.  Until a breakthrough occurs, the photographic data shows just how quickly thousand year old blocks of ice crumble within minutes into the sea, lost forever. 

The Way Back

THE WAY BACK                                                       B                     

USA  (133 mi)  2010  d:  Peter Weir

Peter Weir hasn’t made a film in 8 years, which is a staggering revelation considering the superb craftsmanship associated with his films, especially the breathtaking visualizations.  Perhaps he hasn’t been able to raise funds after the mixed reception of his last work, MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD (2003), which played fast and loose with the historical facts, actually changing the storyline from the book upon which the movie was based in order to fit the gung-ho George W. Bush saber rattling war scenario that was taking place at that time.  This is a National Geographic funded project which allows him to film in some of the more remote areas of the globe, based on a 1955 book The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom by Slawomir Rawicz, where he and several others escaped from a Siberian gulag in 1940 and in a year’s time walked 4000 miles from Siberia, finding and following Lake Baikal, trekking past the Tran Siberian railway to Outer Mongolia (also Communist), across the Gobi Desert, past the Great Wall of China (still Communist) into the Himalayan Mountains, initially finding refuge in Tibet, but continuing their trek into India where the British government at the time was staunchly against both the Nazi’s and the Russians, though the Russians were a war ally.  There has been some controversy about the book, as it was initially released as the author’s own story, but when it was revealed afterwards that he was released by the Russians under a 1942 amnesty agreement, Rawicz indicated it is actually the story of three Polish men who recounted their stories to him, one of whom is a former Polish soldier, Witold Glinski. 

Described as the first Hollywood film about the Soviet gulag, this overly detached and in the end unengaging film opens in Poland in 1940 when it was invaded to the West by Hitler and the Nazi’s, and from the East by Stalin and the Russians, opening with a Stalinest interrogation sending a Polish citizen to a Russian gulag for twenty years for making negative statements about Stalin.  The conditions there are decripit, with prisoners starving from lack of adequate food, housing prisoners with professional killers who run the inside of the prisons with smuggled weapons.  In reality, these were forced labor camps, something that was common in both Japan and China during this same time period, where the conditions were so brutal that escape seemed the only viable option.  In Siberia, however, the natural elements are so severe, and the distance so great, that chances of survival from an escape are rare to slim.  This film is reminiscent of the epic Japanese War Trilogy THE HUMAN CONDITION (1959-61), a three part drama by Masaki Kobayashi who documents similar conditions when defeated Japanese soldiers were simply abandoned and left on the mainland of Manchuria, China and had little hopes of ever finding their way back home, where the film follows the futile efforts of one soldier who escaped from a Russian gulag only to wander endlessly, starving for days on end without food, making his way alone through the vast emptiness of the barren landscape, eventually succumbing to weakness and starvation, left to die alone, frozen in the bleak emptiness of a desolate winter.  These exact same circumstances await the seven escapees, one of whom freezes to death the very first night. 

Featuring breathtaking cinematography by Russell Boyd, the humans are specks on the landscape as they initially make their way out of the Siberian forest before becoming engulfed in the immensity of the world around them, afraid to show themselves in Stalinest nations for fear they’d be turned back in to the authorities, so they instead have to creep around towns and hide where they could.  When they reach flat landscapes, it’s most treacherous, as it’s also harder to find food and water out in the open spaces.  One of the film’s failings is the inability to deal with the subject of starvation, which should have been everpresent throughout the journey, yet they somewhat nonchalantly find food all too easily.  Finding water in the desert was truly miraculous, but there was very little tension established about finding food.  Instead when people started to physically deteriorate, attention was paid to physical injuries or ailments, but no words spoken about food, which had to have been on their minds, perhaps even hallucinating about it.  Also, some of the arduous nature of their adventure is glossed over, as the seasons change from ferocious winter storms to spring pretty quickly.  The film also does little to delineate between the characters, where the audience never develops an emotional attachment to any of them, or understands why one is considered the navigator or leader, when he’s actually the youngest or newest prisoner, which makes little sense.  Who made him in charge?  In reality, it’s human nature for there to have been some dissension in the ranks over leadership, yet in this film there was no discussion whatsoever.  It was this lack of tension or screen intensity between the characters that left a feeling of vague disconnection with the audience, where the enormity of what was taking place rarely developed into an acute sense of awareness or personal triumph, never really becoming quite so intensely powerful as Phillip Noyce’s RABBIT-PROOF FENCE (2002), which remains the definitive film on the subject, perhaps because the journey coincided with monumental social changes, so the epic adventure was superbly and dramatically placed in historical context.