Zen! The Zen quality of this grand new independent film, Ice People is magnificent in its simplicity! We search to see the speck of human movement as explorers quest for dating the age of our earth. The process is slow as molasses. It must be the freezing atmospheric conditions, which frame the slow work, going on in the unimaginable cold of 20, 50, to 70 degrees below zero. Like lines in the sand, around the Zen Gompa, they are simply perfect.
People and crystals moved by the howling wind, the solid rains of times gone by, slide around the rocks. Presenting a picture of what the hold of cold can have on a universe in one grain of ice. The inner silent scientific process mirrors the outer icy quiet. Crunch, crunch, crunch in syncopation with the lub, lub, lub, pulse. Passion pounds in the hearts of the four scientists when the helicopter touches the ice, hovering lightly, never do the blades stop turning. If the engines did turn off, the chances of resuming flight would be minimal. Metal and machines function differently in deep sub zero temperatures. It is the summer chill with a comparatively warm and sunny 20 below when the helicopter scene is filmed. The exhaust creates the unusual breathing vapor that keeps the scientists out of the tents longer than is healthy. There is no moist vapor in any of the other scenes so we, sitting in our comfortable cinema chairs, forget the crisis lurking within every event in such cold country. The movie crew is extremely lucky to have no tents blow away or other traumas inherent in Antarctica expositions.
Winds on the flimsy tents draw us, as viewers, into the universal adventure, which springs forth from these particular courageous and noted geologists Allan Ashworth and Adam Lewis
This is a film story you and your friends should not miss. For me this film is following a long read of a story seen in print, was it the New Yorker? The print version is told from the point of view of the helicopter pilot. He spends half a year as a doctor somewhere in Middle America and trains hard for the grueling work of maintaining and flying in this area of the Antarctic. His wife understands his lust for this adventure, as I feel sure the spouses of our scientists understand the mania for their husband and wives work. The importance of the pilot in supporting the work of the several groups of scientists sheds a sliver of understanding on the very volatile picture of life on ice. Three cheers for the San Francisco Independent Film Festival for bringing me comfortably close to the cold, without myself getting frost bite!
For more info on this frigid film, go here.
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