It’s a Mads, Mads world

Don’t mistake this fine movie for other, less fine movies. It’s about two plane-crash survivors — one male, one female. But it’s not 2017’s The Mountain Between Us, which was almost unwatchable. This is a new release set in the Far North and starring Mads Mikkelsen — but it’s not Polar, the Netflix movie where he’s an assassin with a jaunty eye-patch; half unwatchable.

This is Arctic, a strippeddown survival story from first-time director Joe Penna, and it’s very, very watchable. Mikkelsen’s character, Overgård has been stranded on a mountainside. How long? Long enough to have set up ice-fishing lines nearby, collected a sizable stash of fish, and trudged a giant SOS in the snow, filled in with dark rocks.

But he’s not telling us anything. Mikkelsen’s first words, about 10 minutes into the movie, are when he visits a cairn that marks the grave of his plane-mate. He looks at it, exhales a “See you tomorrow” and walks off again.

It’s one of just a handful of utterances he’ll make in this quiet, powerful tale. Mostly it’s his rugged face that does the communicating, transmitting resolve, triumph, hope, satisfaction, despair and chagrin — the last when, after he’s jury-rigged a piece of survival equipment, he finds the real thing in an unexplored nook of the aircraft. Unable to remain completely silent at this irony, he mutters in Danish: “Are you serious?”

Overgård’s Crusoe-like existence is changed (just like Crusoe’s) with the discovery of a footprint; alas, it’s from a polar bear. Then he comes across a survivor from another crash. Played by Iceland’s Maria Thelma Smáradóttir, she’s worse off than he is, which gives him an elemental goal; save the woman.

His attempts are simple; he unfolds a map of the area, finds what looks to be an automated weather station a few days away on foot, draws a line from A to B on the chart, and wills himself along it. “We’ll be fine,” he tells his silent companion, though whether he believes it himself is less certain.

Penna and his writing companion Ryan Morrison clearly have a less-is-more ethos; complementing the minimal dialogue, the score is simple but stirring, and the cinematography stark.

The wide shots emphasize the character’s loneliness, and the terrifying grandeur of nature. When Penna and Morrison first wrote their story they set it on Mars, but it was a wise choice to relocate the drama closer to home. Pitting one’s psyche against a hostile universe doesn’t require a spaceship, a spacesuit or even a first name; just a parka and a pair of boots will do. ≤≤≤≤

Arctic opens Feb. 8 in Toronto; Feb. 15 in Vancouver and Montreal; and Feb. 22 across Canada.