There are films that have the flavor of a book. Where words are so strong that they could do without images. Except that here, they accentuate its beauty. Journey to the South Pole, by Luc Jacquet, is a very personal feature film that the director tells with his words and his voice and in which he puts himself on stage. Exactly thirty years after setting foot for the first time in Antarctica, the man who enjoyed immense success and won the Oscar for best documentary in 2006 with The Emperor’s March returns there to try to explain his addiction to the magnetic continent.
In this interior story, he does not immediately place his camera at the South Pole, but shares with us the long road that leads there. From Tierra del Fuego and Cape Horn, he shows that reaching this hostile land requires a strong dose of will and a lot of self-sacrifice. Walking his silhouette in the Torres del Paine park, in Chile, he took the opportunity to warn of the ravages of global warming. Struck by the fires, the charred trunks, like statuary ghosts, bear witness to this harsh reality. Yet a fascinating poetry coats the whole.
How can you not feel overwhelmed by the three-meter wingspan of the condor or the power of the albatrosses? What can we say in front of these flat, milky seas whose whiteness is enhanced by the gray gradients in the background? What is more indescribable than white expanses where the gaze gets lost and where the landmarks have nothing in common with those of our Earth? How can you not be charmed by the clumsy gait of the gentoo, Adélie or emperor penguins? These inhabitants have no other truth to proclaim than their insolent capacity to tame these territories where man remains intermittent. Hence the need to accept what nature wants to give it.
Also read: Cape Horn, 400 years of legend
From Cape Horn, it takes five to six days at sea to reach Antarctica. The crossing has nothing in common with a sunny cruise. To the rhythm of the hollows caused by rough seas, the vague silhouette of Luc Jacquet rises along the screen and comes back down. However, the icebreaker sometimes comes up against those who are stronger than it. The filmmaker takes advantage of these forced stops to explore the ice floe, knowing that it could swallow him up. It then transforms into a tiny black dot in vast white spaces. A way of being present without overflowing with presence. In infinities where the mind can wander, wonder, contemplate. “In front of a large empty space, creativity is multiplied,” confides Luc Jacquet.
Faced with so much beauty, the use of artistic blurs could have been minimized. Whatever. The main thing is in the reverie in which the filmmaker takes us. A one-way ticket to his emotions composed in artistic and sometimes abstract black and white. This choice makes nature breathe and hear its silence. Luc Jacquet follows his desires more than a well-established scenario. No erudition or great speeches in this hour and twenty minutes in terra incognita, but the words of a man who succeeds in sharing his passion and his thoughts on the situation of the planet.
“Journey to the South Pole”. Documentary by Luc Jacquet. Duration: 1 hour 22 minutes.
The Note of Figaro: 3.5/4.
