Against the Ice

The Geometry of Desolation

There is a specific kind of silence in *Against the Ice*—a heavy, pressurized quiet that only exists where there is absolutely no sound of machinery or other people. It’s the silence of being truly, existentially lost. Peter Flinth’s 2022 film, set in the brutal, shifting expanse of early 20th-century Greenland, doesn't try to be a sweeping epic of discovery. It’s something much smaller, and in many ways, much more dangerous: a study in what happens to the human mind when the only thing you have to look at is the person standing next to you, and the only thing you have to fear is the horizon.



The film arrives with a specific pedigree, anchored by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who not only stars as the obsessed Captain Ejnar Mikkelsen but co-wrote the script. There’s something revealing about his choice here. Having spent years in the high-stakes, political theater of *Game of Thrones*, watching him retreat into the skin of a man who values a map more than his own life feels like a deliberate deconstruction of the "hero." Mikkelsen isn't grand. He is stubborn, bordering on delusional, his face often obscured by the grime and frost of the Arctic. He’s a man who has decided that his duty is worth dying for, and he’s decided that his subordinate, Joe Cole’s Iver Iversen, is coming along for the ride whether he likes it or not.

What struck me most wasn't the survivalism—the hacking at ice, the boiling of water, the endless march—but the way the geography dictates the pacing. The film forces us to sit in that emptiness. As *Variety*’s review noted upon its release, the film feels like "a harrowing journey," but for me, it’s less about the harrowing nature of the environment and more about the tedious, mind-numbing reality of isolation. You can feel the cold in the way they move. There’s a stiffness in Coster-Waldau’s shoulders, a slow, methodical gait that suggests he’s trying to conserve every calorie of energy he has left.



There is a moment—and you’ll know it when you see it—involving a polar bear attack that shifts the movie’s tone entirely. It’s not choreographed like a typical action set-piece; it’s clumsy, desperate, and confusing. You can’t tell who is attacking whom in the swirling snow. It’s chaotic, exactly how I imagine a real encounter in that environment would be. It’s a reminder that nature here isn't a villain with a plan; it’s an indifferent force that doesn't care if you live or die. After that, the film pivots. The physical survival is still there, but the *real* battle becomes the psychological erosion caused by their entrapment.

I found myself watching Iversen (Joe Cole) with the most curiosity. He starts as the mechanic—the guy who was never supposed to be on this expedition—and he becomes the heartbeat of the film. Watching his eyes dull as the days bleed into weeks is a small, quiet tragedy. He isn't a soldier or a hardened explorer; he’s a regular person thrust into a situation where "regular" doesn't help you survive. He carries the audience’s fear. When he starts to crack, it feels personal.



Does it all work? Maybe not perfectly. There are moments where the plot beats feel a little mechanical, hitting those expected survivalist rhythm markers that we've seen in other films of this ilk. It doesn't quite reach the metaphysical heights of *The Terror*, nor does it have the high-octane grit of *The Revenant*. But perhaps that’s a feature, not a bug. It’s an honest, grounded account of two men stuck in a place that wants them gone.

Ultimately, *Against the Ice* isn't a movie about conquering the Arctic. It’s a movie about the cost of maintaining one’s identity when you’re stripped of everything that defines you—your status, your tools, your food, your hope. It’s a long, freezing, and oddly intimate look at two men finding out that in the end, when the ice is closing in, all you have is the person you chose to walk with. And honestly, that’s enough.