Against the Ice is adapted from “Two Against the Ice” by Ejnar Mikkelsen, an accounting of his 1909 expedition that was first published in 1955, then finally released in North America in 2003. The tale is adapted for the screen by Joe Derrick and Game of Thrones star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who also portrays Mikkelsen, and is directed by Peter Flinth.
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The frustrating thing about discussing Against the Ice is that it’s extremely well put together, and many people clearly put in an immense amount of work to get it made, but there just isn’t much there. The cinematography is packed with stunning shots of the frozen landscapes. It was filmed on location in Greenland and Iceland, and that commitment to the setting makes a lot of it a treat to look at. Filming this thing must have been a very serious undertaking, there were reports of injuries and even one story about the crew being stranded on a glacier. This level of additional difficulty makes the cast’s outstanding performances even more impressive. The film’s producer, Baltasar Kormakur is clearly fascinated by these natural survival dramas, he previously directed Everest and Adrift. The sheer filmmaking skills on display make this an undeniably well-crafted piece, but it lacks the deeper elements of many of its peers.
The plot is simple, as is every other aspect of the film. The year is 1910, Captain Ejnar Mikkelsen leads a Danish expedition to the frozen northeastern corner of Greenland. He is guided by a diary that points the way towards a previous expedition’s haul. His goal is to disprove an American claim to the area and hand exclusive control of Greenland to Denmark. After a failed dog-sled trek, Mikkelsen has a hard time recruiting a volunteer to join him for the second attempt. Mikkelsen is accompanied by mechanic Iver Iversen, who has little experience navigating in the cold. The duo is swiftly left for dead by the rest of the team and must survive harsh conditions in an arctic cabin for over two years. They face wild animals, natural disasters, and the gradual degradation of their own sanity.
There have been plenty of movies in this model already, Arctic, Alive, The Mountain Between Us, and many more. Against the Ice inhabits the middle of the spectrum, better than many and worse than others. The dialogue is the big weak point. The script can be best described as workmanlike. It communicates its basic themes but regularly drops pseudo-philosophical diatribes with little further reflection. Interesting ideas are occasionally brought up, and it keeps threatening to make a larger point about duty, nationalism, exploration, nature, or any other topic more high-minded than freezing to death. It just doesn’t want to explore larger topics, and its take on main characters slipping into madness is unoriginal at best. Aspects of the storytelling feel inspired by pulp novels, and the film’s version of planting and payoff is a bit elementary. The lines that foreshadow later events will be very obvious to most viewers. Ditto the attempts at messing with perception. There’s just nothing surprising or deep hidden behind all the standard frozen horror.
Against the Ice makes mistakes on both sides when it comes to historical adaptation. Those with any familiarity with the events of the story might find the character’s English accents and regular use of anachronism frustrating. This is a common Hollywood problem, for some reason, films regularly take any accent from Ancient Greek to modern Mandarin and use English in its place. Not every character falls prey to this issue, but the ones that do are distracting in a film that spends so much time telling the audience where everyone is from. The events are straightforwardly adapted from the book, but true stories are rarely well-paced. There’s no sense of escalation or that things are getting worse as the main characters’ time in the ice is chronicled by an on-screen day count. This hurts the film’s overall flow and makes it hard to come away with any satisfaction in the end.
There’s a lot to like about Against the Ice, from the beautiful visuals and solid performances to the occasionally fun dialogue exchanges to the half-hearted attempts at a message. Fans of the larger subgenre of survival drama or viewers particularly afraid of freezing to death, or people with strong grasps of Danish history will probably enjoy this film. It’s worth watching, even if most audiences probably won’t remember sitting down to it a month later. Be warned, however, those who can’t stand it when dogs die in film should skip it.
Against the Ice is streaming on Netflix now.
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