Myth of the hero finally challenged
Amundsen (M, 125 mins) Directed by Espen Sandberg Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★★★ 1⁄2
In English and Norwegian with English subtitles
It says a lot about our bias in the English-speaking parts of the world, that Roald Amundsen, one of the king-hell heavyweights in any ‘‘greatest explorer of all time’’ sweepstakes, is mostly still remembered by us as the bloke who beat Robert Falcon Scott to the South Pole, and who thus, by a dubious and wildly nationalistic leap of logic, somehow also caused the deaths of Scott and his party.
Scott’s demise was the usual triumph of over-confidence and some very bad luck, whereas Amundsen planned his expedition down to the last gram of food, had a pack of proven polar dogs to pull his lightweight sleds, left a month earlier than Scott and had the enormous advantage of being Norwegian, and thus a bit more at peace with bone-chilling cold than the less appropriately equipped Scott.
On his return to Europe, Amundsen was lionised by the Norwegian and Scandinavian press, but in England, and throughout much of the world, he was cast as almost an enemy of the Empire, and not quite ‘‘our sort’’.
Amundsen covers all this – at last – from the Norwegian point of view, before setting out on a lightly trod expedition across the rest of Amundsen’s immensely storied life.
There were numerous other adventures, ill-fated and then successful assaults on the North Pole, a couple of notable love affairs and a relationship with his brother – and partial financier – that was more than usually strained.
Nicely, Amundsen doesn’t hold back – as many biopics of Scott have – from pointing out that this national hero, if he felt undermined or thwarted at all, could act like a total asshat.
It takes an extreme personality to reach both ends of the Earth without a map, and Amundsen could be nothing if not extreme, at times. I like seeing the myth of the heroic-but-ordinary man challenged as it is here.
Amundsen suffers from a clumsy structural device that gets in the way of any real narrative flow, and perhaps a lack of budget – compared to a Hollywood film – that delivers some special effects that aren’t terribly special. But there is still enough here to make a trip to the theatre well worth it, if the story of this complicated man interests you at all.