Sunday, October 13, 2024

ENDURANCE***** - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Day 4


The story of Sir Ernest Shackleton and the Endurance is one of those tales that obsesses land-lubbers like me.  I have always been fascinated by explorers who push themselves beyond the limits of ordinary endurance and especially those tails of against-the-odds survival. I am a sucker for docs on Everest, or films like SOCIETY OF THE SNOW, and an armchair specialist on Shackleton. So I came to the new documentary with high expectations, made even higher knowing that it featured restored and colorised stills and moving images from expedition photographer Frank Hurley thanks to my beloved BFI National Archive.

The film tells two stories in tandem. The first is that of the original expedition over a hundred years ago. Through contemporary photos and films, and audio and film recordings of its members, we hear of their journey to Antartica aboard the Endurance. We see how the ship is caught in pack ice and had to be abandoned. We see the men make camp on the ice, and then have to take to boats and row to an island on which they cannot survive.  At which point Shackleton takes one of the boats and four other men and attempts to reach the whaling station on South Georgia - an improbably journey and an improbable rescue. The men had been away for years, while a World War was raging. Most immediately signed up for service.

The story captures the imagination because it's one of failure but also of improbable survival. And it's also the story of a man who was a rogue, financially incontinent, and made several bad choices, but who also had tremendous courage and did his best by his men. 

The second story in the film is that of a 2022 expedition to discover the shipwreck of the Endurance, led by an international team of scientists and the popular British historian Dan Snow. We feel their excitement at finally uncovering the wreck and wonder at the HD scan of the largely in tact ship. 

Directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin (NYAD, FREE SOLO) and Natalie Hewit ably cut between the two stories and create a sense of excitement and tension even though we know the outcome of both stories. I particularly loved seeing the colourised archive footage which made the story seem vivid. And I also loved the way in which items in the wreckage were matched up to the iconic photos and movies at the end.  It made the whole thing feel real and contemporary rather than a tale of derring-do from the Edwardian era.

As I said before, I was primed to love this film and I was not disappointed. But I hope it will resonate with audiences less familiar with the Shackleton story.  Moreover, with its use of both archival footage and AI to recreate the expedition's voices, this feels like a documentary that shows mastery of how films can be created now and in the future. 

ENDURANCE has a running time of 103 minutes. It had its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival. It does not yet have a commercial release date.

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