Forget the ultra-nice remake packaged by Disney, the real one Antarcticait's Koreyoshi Kurahara's original and we still can't get over it.
Nobody is unaware that the Hollywood industry is a big laundry machine ready to sanitize everything she touches. So when she seeks to modernize works whose culture is the antithesis of the American-centric diktat, the result is anything but up to par and even irrelevant. THE Godzilla by Roland Emmerich, as generous and amusing as he is, very well acts for example the stupid and nasty westernization of his Japanese counterpart, and the same goes for Antarctica.
Despite the public and critical success of the original version in 1983, the Disney version released in 2006 with Paul Walker overshadowed him. However, the film directed by Koreyoshi Kurahara easily crushes this White Fang by the poor man signed Frank Marshall. The budget may be the same for both productions (40 million dollars), the sensitivity displayed by the Japanese filmmaker claims untouchable authenticity and radicalityespecially for the firm with big ears.
MOUNTAINS AND WONDERS
When cinema propels our four-legged friends to the forefront, it is often to pay homage to their valiant models of flesh and blood. We all have Balto and Togo in mind, as well as the films inspired by their true story, and Antarctica proceeds from the same logic by relating events that occurred in 1958, during an expedition led in the middle of the white continent by Japanese scientists, responsible for fifteen sled dogs.
The real turning point in this story comes when the scientific team, led by Ushioda (Ken Takakura), is ordered to leave the base and abandon the pack there as a storm threatens the region. Climatic conditions which prevent any rescue operation, leaving the animals, tied and soon without food, to their sad fate. But thanks to the strong heads of the group, brothers Taro and Jirothe dogs break free and try to survive against the elements.
Some evil tongues will say that the film has aged, that it is anything but “sexy”, and we cannot blame them so much. Antarctica is almost a mockumentary. Far from the hectic rhythm of big Hollywood productions, the Japanese director favors long contemplative shotscaptured on the spot, to best recreate the beauty and hostility of an environment regulated by Nature itself. Beyond the melting of glaciers and polar winds, it is the law of the jungle, or rather of the ice floe, which imposes itself between animals.
In this regard, we still think of this defenseless seal, attacked by the pack, or of this killer whale which injures one of the dogs. No, nothing is embellished, and the atonal voice-over who describes the events in an imperturbable manner (at the same time, this is his role) further adds to the relentless hyper-realism of the film. This attention to spaces, to temporality, is also the happy consequence ofa shoot that lasted three years.
THE DISTRESS POLE
How many times has a dog survived the worst cataclysm in the name of cinema? We all remember the labrador in Independence Day (good old Emmerich again) who narrowly avoids incineration. So yes, it is customary to caress the public in the direction of sparing these brave doggies. But that would be forgetting The Plague Dogsand therefore Antarcticawhere man's best friend is drooling like never before, even if it means dying coldly before our eyes.
This is still one of the big differences with the 2006 remake, no compromise is made here with the harsh reality of the facts. The adventure begins with fifteen dogs, and only two remain alive at the end. The results are disastrous, where Disney's freeze-dried version saves almost the entire pack (we shouldn't shock the toddlers). In the case of the Japanese film, there is no heroization of animals eithereveryone undergoes and adapts despite disparities in temperament in the group which ensure better chances for some (what do you want, it's natural selection).
-On the killing side, Antarctica also knows how to renew itself and confronts us with slightly traumatic situations. Between a drowning under a block of ice, a fall down a steep mountain and a few other joys, the camera is not afraid to watch the dogs gradually decline and eventually die out. To drive the point home, we are entitled to subtitles in the form of epitaphs which confirm the death of each animal: “ Deri, 6 ans, nay Asahikawa« , « Shiro, 3 years old, born in Kio“, and we’ll spare you the rest.
Of course, and fortunately, not everything is black in this white hell. And at times, we clearly feel to what extent these snowy immensities and the absence of men allow the pack to let off steam. Antarctica becomes nothing more and nothing less than their playground. The director thus takes pleasure in seeing them invest this setting without sparing themselves, all the aerial shots serving precisely to give them free rein and give them back an ounce of power. .
LIKE SNOW IN THE SUN
Where Antarctica also shows itself to be very radical, it is in its recourse to formal or aesthetic biases which are much more experimental than the average. We must obviously start by quoting the electronic soundtrack by Vangelisthe conductor already at work on the scores of Blade Runner et Chariots of Firewhich envelops the story in an atmosphere worthy of a science fiction film.
However, these musical choices never betray the hyper-realism of the company. On the contrary, since each sound, even synthetic, refers to the sensory experience of the pack. The same goes for the work on the image which embraces the vertigo of the dogs, especially during a scene of polar auroras that is both fascinating and very strange, where the subjectivity of the animals seems to distort the lights in the sky (in any case, as a luminescent show, it is something other than the traditional Christmas mapping).
This aridity of the scenario, which favors sensation over dramaturgy, is finally due to the gradual reduction in the presence time of Ushioda and the other human characters on screen. Even though the director does not completely oust them, continuing to recount their torments once they return to Japan, the main thing remains the canine adventure and the requirement for a plot to the bone, without excessive anthropomorphism, the dogs remaining wild beasts, with their own instincts.
There are also different versions of the filmincluding one planned especially for the French public, all truncated by at least thirty minutes compared to the initial cut. Might as well say it right away, Antarctica must be seen in its full Japanese version. The adventures of the pack unfold with a completely different scale, and we detect more of this taste for wandering, absent from the specifications to which most Western productions meet.
In the department of animal adventure films, Antarctica So stand up to all the competition and show your fangs. More radical and cruel than anything Jean-Jacques Annaud was able to achieve in this area (even if we do not forget The Bear), this Japanese survival remains a superb anomaly and easily buries, you will have understood, its very dispensable American remake stamped Disney. What do you want, Japanese identity and Yankee culture are not alike, and that's fine!
