Polar Express

Arctic (2019) is a stripped down arctic survival movie. It stars Mads Mikkelsen, who says very little, and Maria Thelma Smaradottir, who says nothing.

It starts with Mikkelsen next to his crashed plan in the arctic wilderness, checking his fishing lines. He moves through his daily routine, catching fish, climbing a peak to crank his emergency radio beacon, and clearing the snow off of the big SOS he has scraped clear down to the black rock. You don't get any flashbacks to the crash, no voice-over, but you do get the idea he has been there a while. When he takes off his socks, you see he is missing a toe - an old frostbite wound, probably. So you know he's used to the polar regions. 

After a bit of this, he spots a helicopter, and pulls a flare. They see him, and then crash. He goes to the site and finds the pilot dead, and a woman, maybe the pilot's wife (Smaradottir), badly wounded. He loads her up on a sled, as well as anything good he can get out of the wreck, and takes her back to his plane. He tries to reassure her that her friends will come after her soon. She can't speak, and can barely squeeze his fingers to let him know she is conscious.

Well, her friends don't come to rescue her. She is not healing well. A map from the helicopter shows a "seasonal shelter" a few days walk away. So he leaves a not in the plane, loads up the sled and trudges off.

The trip doesn't go well, even considering they are in arctic conditions, with little food other than trout and some ramen, and a little stove. The route he choose has a cliff he can climb, but can't get the sled up. His reaction is a sour laugh and "I don't believe it" (in Danish). So they have to go the long way around.

And that is pretty much the movie. SPOILER - Maria Thelma never recovers enough to say a word. We don't even know her name. Her ID card is in the Thai alphabet. Note - I thought it looked like an indigenous alphabet, and that she was a Canadian First Nations member. But, no, Thai, although the actress is mixed Thai/Icelandic. Mikkelsen plays a very competent, very careful man. His sleeping, waking, fishing, signalling, are all timed to the beeping of his wristwatch timer. But as strong, competent and clever as he is, the Arctic may beat him.

This movie has some beautiful, deadly scenery, and the occasional polar bear. It has Mikkelsen's dogged determination to save the woman whose husband died trying to save him. It has almost nothing else, a story stripped to the bone. This is YouTube star Joe Penna's first feature and we'll be looking for the next.