Kon-Tiki (2012)

Synopsis: The story of explorer Thor Heyerdal (Pal Sverre Hagen) whose epic 4,300 miles crossing of the Pacific on a balsa wood raft called “Kon-Tiki” in 1947 captured the world’s imagination.

Kon-Tiki is a dramatisation of probably the best-known real-life adventure story of the 20th century, Heyerdahl’s account of it in book form selling 50 million copies world-wide and the film that he made of it winning the 1951 Academy Award for Best Documentary.

It is a superb production, the most expensive Norwegian film ever produced, and no doubt it will have done big business in Scandinavia, although I suspect that the time for story has passed (I was one of 2 people in the cinema). As an adventure film its action is relatively low key and its themes lack the high-minded literary stylings of the recent Oscar-winning raft/lifeboat survival story Life Of Pi , which pretty much leaves only potential audiences of a certain age and whether they are going to be convinced by it is another matter.

Heyerdahl’s 1951 documentary of the same name underplays the audacity, if not the borderline insanity, of trying to float over 4000 miles on a raft and one simply cannot help but wonder if it was as easy as he makes it appears, not least in spending 100 days closely confined with 5 other men. On the upside however you do get a strong sense of the old-fashioned spirit of self-effacing intrepidness underpinning the feat.

Directors Joachim Roenning and Espen Sandberg do an impressive job of filming in the limited space of the raft and excise a large period of time brilliantly with a seemingly continuous pan that zooms out from above the boat  through the clouds, soars above the Earth into the night sky then drops back to pick up the raft near the end of its journey.

Unsurprisingly, they dramatize the story, partly by calling on additional aspects, notably Heyerdahl’s relationship with his wife (Agnes Kittelsen), partly through poetic licence, mainly by ramping up the shark action. The downside is that at the same times as shaping the story into a more conventional narrative form there is very little in the way of characterisation. Heyerdahl emerges as a charismatic obsessive but the rest of his team, with the exception of his maladroit engineer 2nd-in-command (Anders Baasmo Christiansen), remain virtual unknowns and that leaves one rather unsatisfied. Surely motivation is a critical issue here and we get little of it.

The film’s ending however does achieve a real poignancy as it simulates grainy amateur footage and tells us briefly what happened to each of the men in real life.  Perhaps it's just me but the transitoriness of human achievement becomes so very apparent.

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