A Film a Week - Antarctica Calling / Continent Magnétique

 previously published on Cineuropa

Back in 2005, French documentarian Luc Jacquet strode to box-office and Oscars glory with his March of the Penguins, which also marked the start of “penguin mania” in cinema. Jacquet returned to the animals 12 years later with L’Empereur, which nevertheless did not replicate the success of its predecessor. The filmmaker also came back to the penguins’ home continent of Antarctica two years earlier to make a documentary about global warming, Ice and the Sky, which garnered some generally favourable reviews from critics, but still did not cause much of a sensation.

Once again, Jacquet goes back to the continent that has inspired him so much with Antarctica Calling, but his focus is a little different now. The key can be found in the original French title of the film – Continent Magnétique – hinting at the filmmaker himself and his obsession with the place. The documentary has premiered in the Piazza Grande section of Locarno and will probably attract some attention from festivals, both documentary and general ones.

In Antarctica Calling, the filmmaker’s personal journey starts in the south of Patagonia, on the southern end of the Andes, where he comments on the natural phenomena in all their harshness and stunning beauty. Then he crosses to Tierra del Fuego, where he teases viewers who might be expecting more penguins with imagery of the endearing birds for the first time, after which he boards a ship and, after an exciting journey across the choppy waters, ends up in the titular continent that keeps calling him back.

But, we can assume, it is not about the physical journey, but rather the journey of the heart and mind that entices the filmmaker to keep coming back to this mostly uninhabitable place. So Jacquet deals less with penguins, ice and sky, and more with himself in a seemingly endless string of thoughts, musings and observations in his own voice-over narration. In that department, the filmmaker perhaps does not reach the same philosophical heights and depths of Werner Herzog or Chris Marker, but he does a decent job of keeping viewers interested enough in his attempts to convert something that is not that easy to express verbally into words.

Luckily, Jacquet’s musings get a suitable audio and visual backdrop. Cyrille Aufort’s omnipresent music score crosses neoclassical genres with ease, incorporating different influences from several movie genres in the process so as to ramp up the tension and dictate the emotion. It might not be at all subtle, but it is more than effective, and the same could be said for the sound design. However, the visuals are the main stars of the film, even more so than its auteur. Often shot with drones by the trio of cinematographers (Christophe Graillot, Jérôme Bouvier and Sarah Del Ben) in high-contrast black and white, which might seem like a very risky choice, and paired with some precise editing by Stéphane Mazalaigue, they keep the viewers’ eyes fixated on the screen and their ears open to whatever Jacquet has to say. In the end, after Antarctica Calling, many in the crowd might feel the call of Antarctica, along with its ice, skies, turbulent seas and… penguins.