The greatest movie ever made..!

Did you people see the same film I saw?

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

The Anthony Powell who made this documentary is not one of the famous artists by that name, not the great costume designer nor the author of the classic novels "Dance to the Music of Time". He's just another member of this generation's "me generation" followup, one of the millions of believers that the most trivial "human" story is intrinsically interesting. This pointless feature is not, it's just dull footage.As a kid living in Cleveland I enjoyed watching our local TV series Jim Doney's "Adventure Road", in which guests would narrate silent films they shot on world travels, just like the travelogue documentaries that still played as movies in film houses of the day. They provided an eye on the outside world, uneventful slices of life or distant places, pointless but handy time-killers.Powell tells us this took him 10 years to make and he fails to bring to the project an offbeat or even original point-of-view (what our greatest contemporary documentarist Werner Herzog always tries to do), just giving a banal slice of life of folks who choose to live out the long, dark winter of living on the Antarctic continent. No sense of adventure or even danger/dramatics intrudes on the calm, tedious progression of scenes. In common with fiction cinema there is a story credit, but no actual story.I have always felt that documentaries need to be taken off their pedestal and judged by the same (or at least roughly analogous) parameters as fiction features, since the illusion and pretense of objectivity is a myth. Whether fact or fiction the filmmaker puts his or her personal stamp on what the feature is trying to say, and most docs are scripted, either beforehand or in post-production. In the wake of the revolutionary Godfrey Reggio films like "Koyaanisqatsi", a philosophical bent has permeated many docs, but this one is frankly stupid - the final line during the film proper is by a young misogynist who compares the "square world" (that means us, in the audience) to cattle -not the Hitchcockian view of those necessary evils, his actors, but rather as the guy voices over "just moving from place to place". At this point, Powell ends the show not with a striking vista of the Antarctic continent's steely beauty, but rather another of many cornball time-lapse shots of a frenetic metropolis at night, the sort of image that typifies "Koyaanisqatsi". Yes, we poor humans are in a rut, scurrying around in a pointless existence. No more pointless than the self-shut-ins who revel in living out the endless night of Antarctic winter in lonely fashion, even complaining (as we see in the film underlined) when new folk arrive sporting dreaded sun tans yet, to invade their privacy and solitude.With such dull stuff to watch my mind wandered and I thought of a movie (fiction for now but someday documentary in nature) about life in an expatriate Earth colony on Mars or perhaps a moon of Jupiter, as presented by some earnest fellow like Powell. If it was a sci-fi entertainment there would be drama and an inevitable existential crisis threatening the colony with extinction, or even bug-eyed monsters attacking. But in "Antartica" nothing happens, and because it is cloaked in the form of a documentary it passes the low-low bar as quasi- entertainment or educational content. Even the most minimalist of fiction directors (think of Lonergan and the stupid "award-winning" Manchester by the Sea) would have trouble getting away with that.

This informative and visually fascinating documentary centers on two themes primarily, and is set on the continent of Antarctica, which lies at the very bottom of our planet.First, the film gives us a rather intimate look at the people who venture there to live and work at McMurdo Station, the U.S. camp in Antarctica, and which is by far the largest of the some 30 international stations set up and protected by treaty.Secondly, the movie treats us to the spectacular celestial shows that occur there, as well as looks at Mt. Erebus, the southernmost active volcano on the globe, the Dry Valleys (considered by many to be closest to the topography of Mars), as well as some glimpses of the surrounding animal population, namely penguins and seals, who can survive the incredibly harsh conditions on the continent.Anthony Powell, who grew up on a dairy farm in New Zealand, directs, narrates, and often appears in the documentary (which was 10 years in the making), as he's a veteran of travel there, and whose job it is to set up radio communications in remote areas outside the camp. He allows the viewer to get a real feel of a full year in Antarctica, which basically has only two seasons summer and winter, with the incredibly stark contrasts between the two.Overall, this film gave me a strong sense of what it would be like to live and work there, and I found it to be an absorbing experience highlighted by nature and one of the very few areas in the world not yet changed by mankind.

As it sits, right out of the box, this is a treat.Documentaries are best when they project the passion of their creator and here we have a gentleman with infinite experience of living on the continent, a gentleman who even took the time and trouble to make his own camera equipment (that would work in the cold) and set out to capture the "experience" for those will never get it first hand.Which is most of us.Making heavy use of voice over (as opposed to head and shoulders interviews) this is a fun ride.I can tell what would have made it perfect.Since this is fundamentally a story about cold (people yes,landscape yes, but cold mainly) I would have loved to see a digital readout over every shot showing current temperature.For example, when "summer" ends and the last plane is leaving, I saw people without outerware, dressed casual standing outside. I kept thinking, what was the temperature? In the next shot sequence a winter storm has set in which looks like it could freeze thoughts. What was the temperature then? Just a thought. Good movie. Recommended.

After watching Antarctica: A Year on Ice, you'll run out of superlatives to describe the experience, I still have a hard time explaining my experience over there due that people that have not been there can't really get it. But this Movie will give you a glimpse of the experience one have or will have if you get to be there.But really How do you share your thoughts about a place which defies description? a place vital to our planet, but which the vast majority will never go there.Why The title? After a few Combat tours one does lose some Humanity but working in Antarctica it help me deal wit the war demons. It was my experience but each person is differentEventually I may go back wit my wife :D