Arctic Parent Guide

The temperature in Calgary, Canada today, including wind chill, was -24° Celsius, (that’s -11.2° for you Fahrenheiters.) The wind was certainly a factor as I slogged seven city blocks into a headwind to reach the movie theater. I tell you this firstly, because I appreciate your pity, and secondly, because arriving in the theater with a dripping nose, numb face, and fingers too stiff to move gave me an immediate empathy for the protagonists of this film. The story of Arctic unfolds in the mountains of Iceland - a place much colder than Calgary.

Overgård, (Mads Mikkelsen,) has already lived through an airplane crash. The location of his accidental landing—a stretch of barren snow—is so far north that the sun doesn’t set and something as simple as finding drinking water requires inventiveness. Fortunately, Overgård has the skills to survive. He makes fishing hooks out of salvaged scraps of metal, signals for help with a hand cranked radio, and sets a timer on his watch to track the passage of days and maintain healthy sleeping hours. He’s doing okay, but he’s desperate for rescue. One day, in a bitter snowstorm, salvation appears in the form of a passing helicopter. But when the pilot attempts a landing, the result is disaster. With the helicopter smashed to pieces and the pilot dead, Overgård does the saving as he drags a young woman, (Maria Thelma Smáradóttir,) from the wreckage.

Even after stitching her stomach wound closed, (the injury and accompanying operation are shown,) it’s obvious to both Overgård and the audience that the woman’s in rough shape. She’s barely conscious, and almost completely unresponsive as Overgård tries to communicate. These feeble attempts, and Overgård’s occasional habit of talking to himself, constitute the only dialogue in this film. Nonetheless, Overgård is determined to keep her alive and uses up what little medicine he can scrounge from the wrecks of both aircraft. With that gone, he knows that they can no longer wait around for rescue—the woman’s life depends on them reaching civilization themselves. Bundling her into a sleeping bag and strapping her, and their few supplies, to a sled, Overgård begins his impossibly long journey, dragging the weight of the woman behind him.

Like the title itself, Arctic is minimalist, raw and effective. It’s beautifully crafted—shot on location in Iceland’s polar regions, it’s easy to see that the actors are really feeling it as they shiver in the biting cold, huddle into their coats, and have an all round miserable time. It’s also unflinching in portraying the suffering of the main characters—wounds ooze, fingers turn purple with frostbite, and desperate times call for desperate measures as one character, in a particularly painful scene, is forced to injure his own leg to escape being pinned beneath a boulder. (Whether the leg is broken or just badly hurt is unclear, but the character’s agony, bleeding wound, and resulting trail of blood are shown.) Some of this suffering is accompanied by strong language, and I noted two uses of the sexual expletive. The characters are also in constant peril - the possibility of freezing to death is very real, and they carve caves out of snow or zip themselves in sleeping bags to wait out fierce blizzards. As if that weren’t enough, at one point they face a terrifying attack from a polar bear.

For most children, this is obviously much too intense. But for the older crowd, especially those with an interest in survival, an appreciation for impeccable acting, or a love of cinematography, this foray into the frozen north comes with its own kind of beauty. It’s a celebration of resilience, ingenuity, and optimism. It’s also a touching tribute to the human capacity to love, protect and sacrifice for others—even total strangers. For teens and adults who aren’t squeamish about blood and peril, this is a movie with a message worth watching.