Movie Thoughts: Antarctica (1983)

• Released: 23 July 1983
• Directed by: Koreyoshi Kurahara
• Running time: 2 h 23 min
• Rating 4/5

Synopsis

Based on a true story, this movie tells the events of two Antarctica researchers and the fifteen dogs they had to leave behind to fend for themselves on the ice-cold continent for almost a year.

My Thoughts

So some this story may sound familiar. You may have heard of the true life events themselves, but an American adaptation of the events has also been made, known as Eight Below. I will get to that movie eventually, but I also wanted to cover this adaptation: the one that's much more true to the real deal. 

For example, in Eight Below, the story has been Americanized heavily (same as their adaptation of Hachiko's story). There's also way more survivors in that version of the tale, when in reality only two dogs made it out alive. But that's all a story for another day. Right now, I'll be taking a look at the Japanese adaptation of these events.

This movie is definitely a heart wrenching one. For one, just because of the events. Against their will, Ushoida and Ochi have to leave behind their beloved team of sled dogs all alone, not to return for almost another year. They didn't expect any of them to make it out alive, of course, due to the weather conditions, the fact that the dogs were all chained up tightly and the fact that they only had food for a couple of days. 

If you can't handle animal suffering, yeah, please avoid this, because it doesn't shy away from the harshness of the continent. Though some of the dogs manage to get themselves free of the chains and roam the continent in search of food, Antarctica is perilous and, unfortunately, most of them don't make it out alive. In the end, the only known survivors are two brothers, Taro and Jiro. 

That's not all that makes this movie emotional though. Let's go back to Eight Below for a moment. What dogs did they get to play the sled dogs? Siberian huskies and a couple of Malamutes. The breed that Antarctica (accurately) uses, however, are Sakhalin Huskies. This is the actual breed that was left behind in the true story, and, though they didn't know that when making this movie, it is nowadays considered to be as good as extinct. There's still some individuals with Sakhalin blood left, but the gene pool is simply considered too small to save the breed.

This just adds another layer of tragedy to the tale. I've said before that I'm a huge fan of thylacines, an extinct carnivorous marsupial that lived in Tasmania up until their extinction in 1936. What makes their extinction feel so tangible is that there's still real taxidermy specimens and moving grayscale footage of the animals. However, with the Sakhalin, they feel even more tangible, due to this movie being much more recent, and thus of better quality. The movements aren't as janky, it's in color, and there's a whole two and a half hours worth of footage of these canines. So basically when you're watching this movie you know you're watching a dog breed that is pretty much non-existent anymore.

As for the movie itself, it was definitely good. Good acting, likable characters (both the humans and dogs) and it definitely feels more true to the event than the Eight Below film. 

There were also some lower points, however. For one, there are actual scenes where we see the dogs harass a live seal, which doesn't look to be very ethical. I get that it was different times, but we still should be very careful with animal welfare. And, secondly, the film quality was...weirdly inconsistent. Most of the movie (particularly the stuff in Japan and the scenes with the dogs) all had a good film quality, but for whatever reason there were certain shots in the movie (some of ice breaking, others on the SOUWA ship), that were weirdly grainy and incredibly low-quality. Maybe they used different equipment, or some of it is stock footage, but it was just a bit odd in comparison to the rest of the movie.

That said, this is still a very strong adaptation of the real-life events that isn't afraid to be much closer to the (darker) source material than Eight Below. I know I maybe shouldn't compare the two so much, but they're literally two re-tellings of the exact same story, so it's kinda hard not to.