‘Antarctica: Ice and Sky’ Review: Environmental Doc Overpraises Its Subject
The director of “March of the Penguins” sounds the alarm for global warming but also lavishes his glaciologist subject with too much gushy narration
After the visual of an ominous shadow growing bigger and bigger on a piece of ice (metaphor alert!), the film begins with Papineschi explaining how he — I mean Lorius — became an Antarctica enthusiast at the age of 23.
The highlights of these shots, however, comes when the drone capturing the aerial footage pulls back; Lorius is just a speck as he looks out into the spectacular, well, ice and sky, sometimes standing knee-deep in water that likely wasn’t there when he signed on for his first expedition.
With the ice cubes in a glass of whiskey serving as inspiration, Lorius sets out to study the bubbles that appear in the cylinders of ice he’s been pulling out of great depths.
To wit, of Lorius’ first expedition: “I could still feel the cold I refused to yield to and smell the mix of salt, frying oils and burnt diesel that lifted my heart!” Later, when his research got more intense under increasingly horrible conditions, Papineschi yelps, Describe, understand!
Ice & Sky are, finally, a compelling narrative (who wouldn’t be interested in the idea of “fossil air?”) and yet another scientific explanation of global warming.
[...] there’s a call to action at the end of “Ice & Sky.”