Mark Reviews Movies: AMUNDSEN: THE GREATEST EXPEDITION

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 11, 2021

On paper, the accomplishments of Roald Amundsen are staggering. In 1911, he, along with a team of four others, became the first man to reach the South Pole. Fifteen years later, he was part of a larger team who were the first to reach the North Pole aboard an airship.

He was a man of figurative and literal extremes, then—the scope of his drive and the literal polar opposites of his most famous accomplishments. One wonders what kind of person thinks in such a way and even goes beyond dreams or hopes to make such seemingly unthinkable ambitions a reality. Examining the nature of such a person—this man, specifically—is the goal of Amundsen: The Greatest Expedition, which forgoes celebration, glorification, or hagiography for something more ambitious and complex.

At its core, Ravn Lanesskog's screenplay is a pretty straightforward biography, beginning with Amundsen's childhood—fascinated by the idea of exploring uncharted territory and amazed by the feats of those who would come before him—and ending with his disappearance at the age of 55 in 1928. In the movie, he looks much older by the time he takes his final, doomed flight into the Arctic, and that turns out to be an accurate portrayal.

Looking at a picture of the real Amundsen a few years before then, his long, wrinkled face belies his age. He looks either hardened—both by years in the harsh climates of the far south and north and by way of his stern attitude—or weary—of what he endured to achieve what he did or by the knowledge that there is no place else in the world to conquer. With his figure covered in a thick fur coat, his eyes, scanning off into the distance, seem to be looking for something—anything—left for him to accomplish. One would imagine there'd be some sense of satisfaction in those eyes, but there doesn't seem to be even a glimpse of it.

Director Espen Sandberg's film captures that sense, as the story goes through the harrowing exploits of Amundsen's expeditions and then picks apart the figure of a legend as a man who could never settle, never be content, and never stop searching for that next accomplishment. It's a tough look at a very specific, seemingly unknowable personality—seen through the eyes of the man himself and also of those whom he left behind in order reach such figurative and literal extremes.

The explorer is played by Pål Sverre Hagen, who is first seen on his fateful flight into the Arctic—crash landing into the snow and ice of the frozen north, after the plane's mechanics fail in the severe cold. Back home in Norway, his brother Leon (Christian Rubeck) and romantic partner Bess Megids (Katherine Waterston) find themselves waiting for news of Roald in the explorer's home. She knows some things about him. The brother, obviously, knows quite a bit more.

What follows, of course, is a series of flashbacks—first to Leon's childhood, obsessed with the empty space at the top of a glowing globe and enraptured to see the return of Fridtjof Nansen (Trond Espen Seim) after the man crossed Greenland on skis, and to the specifics of his expedition to Antarctica. By then, in his late 30s, Roald had already navigated the Northwest Passage, and under the guise of testing Nansen's theory that the currents would take a ship to the North Pole, Roald gains use of his fellow explorer's ship.

It's a lie, though, spurred on by news that British explorer Robert Falcon Scott has plans to reach the South Pole. Roald wants to beat the man there, using older, time-tested methods—dogs and sleds—and without the mores of the "gentleman" explorers—using the dogs for food when it becomes necessary. What should be a tremendous accomplishment (The scenes of the expedition, including a most intimidating tower of a storm and a close call with a fissure from collapsing ice, are tense) is undermined, though, by Scott's fate and the British attitude toward Roald's methods.

Seeing all of this from Roald's perspective gives us a sense of that drive—not only from the compulsion to explore, but also from the trivial resentment of how his achievement is received by others. He holds a grudge, really, and, in his mind, wastes years of his life in fulfilling his original promise to Nansen, taking the ship northward and riding the icy current toward the North Pole.

Bess, who has spent time in the frigid climates herself, understands all of this, and so, too, does Leon in a way. There's much more to Roald's story, though, involving the fate of two young girls whom he adopts, the almost-hustling ways in which he gains money for his ambitious projects, and the fact that the two brothers haven't spoken in years, despite Leon being Roald's biggest champion and financial supporter until that point.

The film smartly dissects Roald as a man driven by dreams and driven away from others by his overwhelming ego. On the one hand, that sense of self-worth is deserved, as argued by Bess on that long night of waiting (which turns out to be a different night than the one we initially expect). On the other, that ego leaves nothing but unfulfilled promises, broken relationships, and a terrible reputation in its wake.

Sandberg and Lanesskog present these dichotomies as a fact, plain and simple and absent of judgment. Amundsen: The Greatest Expedition gives us a sense of a great man, who left behind a legacy of great things and equally great burdens.

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