Film Forum

Stendhal syndrome, a physical reaction to extreme beauty, is referenced by travelers to the fjords of northeastern Greenland – one of the most remote regions on earth – now accessible for a few short weeks each year due to the effects of climate change. A three-masted schooner carrying a geologist, geographer, geochemist, marine biologist (the only woman), and a couple of artists skims through the shimmering water. Huge icebergs break apart before them, a vast double rainbow stretches across the horizon, and a polar bear seems to appear from nowhere. These Danish explorers’ fascinating musings range from the philosophical to the scientific, from the idealistic to the fatalistic. As the geologist notes: “Life on earth will survive us. We’re but a parenthesis in the development of the earth. And most likely a very short parenthesis.”

DENMARK / SWEDEN • 2013 • 90 MINS. • IN ENGLISH AND DANISH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES • ARGOT PICTURES

Reviews

“Rapturous! A vision of destruction more glorious and terrifying than in any of this summer’s blockbusters. If marveling at the world – and its collapse – sounds appealing to you, hustle up a ticket. Many moments of silent majesty. This film, with its steady beauty and free-floating philosophizing, might have been put together with the head shop in mind, but you don’t need to be high to sit rapt before it. Dencik’s gorgeous, surprising, meditative film opens up one of the world’s last unknown places.”
– Alan Scherstuhl, Village Voice 

“A spectacular voyage toward doomsday! Mesmerizing. This is one to see on a big screen. An experience that wrenches you free of the everyday world and urges you to contemplate all sorts of big-picture questions. Dencik’s film is profoundly ambitious and unorthodox. EXPEDITION is like a stoned camping trip to an unimaginably distant location where your companions are a group of brilliant intellectuals, artists and scientists. This is a highly paradoxical and philosophical nature film.”
– Andrew O’Hehir, Salon 

“An exceedingly droll documentary that’s every bit as beautiful and aimless as the journey itself. Courses with the zeal of Robert Flaherty, the fearlessness of Werner Herzog, and the fatalistic humor of Lars Von Trier. Coheres into something wild and new. Mind-boggling.”
– David Ehrlich, The Onion

“Nature at its most pristine and awe-inspiring.”
 – Scott Tobias, The Dissolve

“A journey that only incipient human extinction might have made possible. With a mood and setting worthy of a murder story by Jack London…this atmospheric work could be remade as a thriller, although that’s really what it is already. This is a landscape that hasn’t been walked by humankind since prehistoric times. There’s plenty of humor…and many moments of revelation.”
– John Anderson, Variety

“A documentary gem (with) a Star Trek-like assembly (in what) looks as if it could be the same vessel Shackleton rode upon to the South Pole. Opening with Mozart’s Requiem before rapidly slamming into Metallica licks, featuring breathtaking…cinematography. If you are exploring the edge of the planet and the beginning of the end of life as we know it, this is the band of crazy Danes that you want to hang with.”
– Kurt Halfyard, Twitch