Film Review: Incredible Personal Tour in ‘Antarctica: A Year on Ice’

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CHICAGO – Along with your local library’s DVD section and equality, Antarctica remains one of the general world’s greatest oversights, even though it’s the size of a continent (because it is one). Around this time of year, the North Pole gets a huge shoutout for its mass production of brand items, but it’s the South Pole that forever remains in the shadow of everything else in the world, only mentioned in films like Werner Herzog’s 2007 documentary “Encounters at the End of the World,” or that 2009 Kate Beckinsale snow thriller “Whiteout.”

HollywoodChicago.com Oscarman rating: 4.0/5.0
Rating: 4.0/5.0

As it turns out from Herzog’s doc and now first-timer Anthony Powell, there is more to Antarctica than a giant rock of frozen water. And where Herzog’s (highly recommended) documentary comes solely from his viewpoint as definitively curious outsider, this week’s release “Antarctica: A Year On Ice” by Powell presents the continent from an insider’s perspective. Powell is a self-proclaimed resident taking beautiful advantage of the advancements in filmmaking technology, using them to capture a grandeur of untarnished glaciers and unique lifestyle.

Directing his first feature film, the charming New Zealander gets real, real quick with a “Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em” bluntness in the first four minutes of his film, essentially a trailer for what’s to come next. I’ll let his direct narration explain: “The most common question I get asked is, ‘what’s it like to live down there?’ It’s so hard to answer that in words, and it’s never really been captured on film before … it’s taken me more than ten years to make this film … in an effort to capture the true feeling of this vast and important place … to understand the place properly, you really need to spend one full year, down here on the ice.” Powell fulfills this with a non-narrative that is seemingly episodic; one that is steered by the land’s alternating two seasons (summer and winter) but with plenty of information he wants to share about the land.

“Antarctica: A Year on Ice” opened today at Chicago’s Music Box Theater. A documentary directed and filmed by Anthony Powell. Rated “PG

StarContinue reading for Nick Allen’s full review of “Antarctica: A Year on Ice”

‘Antarctica: A Year on Ice
‘Antarctica: A Year on Ice’
Photo credit: Music Box Films

StarContinue reading for Nick Allen’s full review of “Antarctica: A Year on Ice”

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