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Kon-Tiki
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| Year: |
2012
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Director: |
Joachim Rønning, Espen Sandberg
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| Stars: |
Pål Sverre Hagen, Anders Baasmo Christiansen, Tobias Santelmann, Gustaf Skarsgård, Odd Magnus Williamson, Jakob Oftebro, Agnes Kittelsen, Peter Wight, Amund Hellum Noraker, Eilif Hellum Noraker, Elisabeth Matheson, Kasper Arneberg Johnsen, Edward Kling
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| Genre: |
Adventure, Biopic |
| Rating: |
  5 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
When Thor Heyerdahl (Pål Sverre Hagen) was a child in Norway, he almost drowned in a lake when he attempted to cross a hole in the ice covering it, but was pulled out just in time to save him. That spirit of adventure is something that has never left him, and he has travelled the world as an archaeologist with his wife Liv (Agnes Kittelsen), often to the Pacific where he enjoys the company of the locals. However, Polynesia fascinates him, as he disputes the received wisdom that the natives arrived from the West - he believes they settled from the East, from around the Peru region of South America and the more he considers it the more he thinks he has hit upon something...
Thor Heyerdahl was possibly the most famous Norwegian of his generation thanks to his pioneering experiments, of which the Kon-Tiki was the most celebrated, a five thousand mile trip across part of the Pacific on a balsa wood raft lashed together with rope, using the same materials available to the Polynesians to prove his point. Most scientists when faced with that level of effort would simply have published their theory for the other experts to judge and draw their conclusions, but Heyerdahl was more determined than most therefore sought to demonstrate his ideas with proof, and what better proof than actually achieving what he posited was capable of the primitive cultures way back thousands of years ago?
Although he would dispute the primitive nature in an instance of the more modern thinking that just because you don't have electricity, doesn't mean you don't know a lot about the world and how to exist in it. The Kon-Tiki expedition was a huge success in practice as Heyerdahl and his crew built and sailed the raft across the vast expanse of water, and though it still didn't convince every member of the establishment he certainly offered them, and the global community, food for thought. Even better, he thought to record the journey on a camera, and the silent footage was edited together to create a fascinating documentary that both won an Oscar among its list of international acclaim and complemented the book he wrote, which sold in its millions.
However, watching the documentary now it is understandably as primitive-looking as the raft was, therefore British producer Jeremy Thomas sought to bring the expedition to life with colour, sound, a widescreen ratio and the finest special effects money could buy. It took over a decade, but he made good on his ambition and the Norwegian film industry was very proud of it, submitting it for the Foreign Language Oscar (although it had been shot in both Norwegian and English versions to widen its appeal), but there were grumbles from some quarters. Most notably from the family of Heyerdahl's right hand man, Herman Watzinger (played by Anders Baasmo Christiansen in the movie), who had a legitimate grievance with the filmmakers about the way their relative was depicted.
Now their brave war hero family member was a doughy, mithering coward who tries to commit suicide by throwing himself overboard when the pressure gets too much for him to bear, all invented for a depiction that the screenwriter admitted he had to beef up dramatically because the expectations of twenty-first century drama demanded it: they needed arguments and conflict even if in real life there had been none. Obviously artistic licence is part of any biopic, but you can see why it rankled here, especially as it comes across as so contrived; the visuals of that azure sea and sky, the wildlife and the sheer thrill of being on that adventure are all very well, but you could tell something was wrong when the 1950 documentary, for all its technical limitations, was by far the more compelling, perhaps because it was a genuine document and not heavily embellished for the magic of the movies. Whether anyone would have been interested in watching a tale that mostly involved a bunch of bearded men placidly gazing out to sea was a different matter. Music by Johan Söderqvist.
[Soda Pictures' Blu-ray looks great, and you can watch either the Norwegian or English version. A trailer is the extra.]
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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