Mads Mikkelsen has spent a lot of time in the snow lately. Last week, he appeared in Netflix’s Polar, a stylish, gritty comic adaptation where he plays a badass assassin who goes on the run after he kidnaps Vanessa Hudgens. This week, he stars in, Arctic, a decidedly more subdued affair about a man and a woman (Maria Thelma Smáradóttir) stranded in the titular snowy wilderness. Directed and co-written by Joe Penna, the film is a brutal yet beautifully-shot examination of one man’s will to survive against all odds. It’s as stressful as it sounds.
While the trailer makes it seem as if Arctic is an action-packed thrill-ride that begins with the crash that stranded Mikkelsen and Smáradóttir’s characters, it actually takes longer to get going. When we first meet Mikkelsen’s character (who we eventually learn is named Overgård), he’s stranded alone, and the audience is left to deduce how. The first thing we see is Overgård shoveling a large SOS into the snow. We assume this is the first time he’s doing it, but as the timer on his watch cues a new activity several times throughout the day, we come to realize this is something he’s done many times since his crash.
Perhaps the most meaningful way Penna and co-writer Ryan Morrison establish how long Overgård’s been there, though, are the moments when they allow Mikkelsen’s brilliant, subtle acting do the work. His blank, hardened expression says volumes about how focused Overgård is on surviving, but we understand how much he longs for human connection from the fact that he clears snow off someone’s cairn every morning. However, it’s not until after the second crash, when he lingers before setting the female survivor down, that we realize how much he’s forgotten that need. Mikkelsen and Smáradóttir barely speak because the latter’s character is basically unconscious throughout, but Mikkelsen is strong enough to keep us invested.
Still, while Mikkelsen’s quieter moments are some of the film’s best, the way he conveys Overgård’s struggle to overcome one obstacle after another gives the film its tension. Like the Robert Redford-fronted All is Lost or even 2000’s Cast Away, Arctic‘s drama comes from the sadistic things Penna and Morrison put him through. The failed helicopter rescue is just the first setback. Things don’t become dire, though, until the woman’s condition begins to worsen and Overgård is forced to set off toward the nearest manmade structure. Some of the obstacles pay off immediately: an unexpected ridge on the path he charts through the mountains or the slow, grueling pace he sets while dragging the unconscious woman through the snow. Others, like his limited fuel supply and the lone polar bear he sees even before the helicopter crash, hang over the film, making the audience more and more anxious the longer they take to happen.
Unfortunately, Chekhov’s polar bear does return and while its reappearance is smart writing, that scene may be a step too far for some viewers. Surely one man’s luck couldn’t be this bad. On its surface, Arctic is a straightforward movie about a man surviving in a brutal environment, but it’s perhaps impossible not to read a larger, more abstract meaning into it too. Watching Overgård struggle to keep going as the setbacks begin to pile up can be exhausting–especially in the film’s final half hour–and in a time when so many people feel hopeless already, not everyone will want to sit through a movie so driven by despair. Others, however, will find catharsis in the way Overgård finds ways to keep going.
At its core, Arctic is not so much about survival, but the way our connection to others can allow us to push back against hopelessness. In the end, it doesn’t really matter how long Overgård has been alone. Any amount of time spent without human connection and living like a machine can leave a person empty. And while his regimented life keeps him alive, it also keeps him stuck in one place and able to convince himself he has a better chance of surviving when all he might be doing is prolonging his own death. That downed helicopter may not be the salvation he wants, but it’s the one he ultimately needs.
Rating: 8/10
