Zero Kelvin

Poetry, science, and machismo all square off on the hellish ice plains of Greenland in this existential action epic from Norse director Hans Petter Moland. Set in 1925, the film opens with poet Larsen (Gard B. Eidsvold) joining a fur-trapping pair--the obscenity-spewing sailor Randbaek (Stellan Skarsgard) and the reticent scientist Holm (Bjorn Sundquist). The poetic mind, the scientific mind, and the testosterone mind (sorry about the contradiction) do not good bedfellows make in the harsh climate of zero kelvin, and for the first half of the film, co-writer/director Moland primes the suspense pump with escalating skirmishes between Larsen and Randbaek, which are, by turns, frightening and comic. In fact, halfway through Zero Kelvin I thought I’d secretly stumbled onto one of the best films of the year. But then--in Shirley MacLaine/Anne Bancroft parlance--came the turning point, and the film just kind of (and I’ll use the technical terminology here) Fell Apart. The fight between Larsen and Randbaek eventually moves so far beyond what their characters seem capable of that we--the audience--are left out in the cold with the sled dogs barking our displeasure. Still this gritty, beautifully filmed (and letterboxed) effort is worth considering. (R. Pitman