Kon-Tiki (FILM REVIEW)
Kon-Tiki
Film Review
by Kam Williams
Norwegian Anthropologist Replicates Polynesia Settlers’ Migration in Oscar-Nominated
Seafaring Epic
At the beginning of the 20th
Century, the conventional wisdom was that Polynesia had been settled by Asians
arriving from the Far East. But it’s one thing
for a pompous professor to simply sit in an ivory tower and speculate about who
might have discovered the island group some 1,500 years ago, and quite another
to go about proving a theory correct by attempting to replicate the putative
pioneers’ perilous feat.
While doing research in the
Marquesas on the Isle of Fatu Hiva in the mid-Thirties, a Norwegian
anthropologist named Thor Heyerdahl (Pal
Sverre Hagen) came up with a novel idea about the roots of the natives. After
studying the local fauna and flora, watching the flow of the tides, and listening
to aborigine folklore about their ancestors’ arduous trek towards the setting
sun, he reasoned that the region must have been settled by tribes migrating there
from South America.
Then,
when his iconoclastic notion was roundly ridiculed by scholarly colleagues back
in academia, Thor decided to prove his detractors wrong by mounting a
5,000-mile expedition from Peru
to Polynesia. And although he knew nothing
about sailing and couldn’t even swim, he did have the sense to assemble a team capable
of assisting him in the dangerous endeavor.
The
plan was to build a balsa wood raft identical to the type used by indigenous
people in pre-Columbian times, painstakingly following their methods of
construction down to the smallest detail. And since they would not be able to
steer this vessel christened the Kon-Tiki, Thor estimated it would take about
three months for the currents and winds to take them to their destination.
His
intrepid crew was comprised of four fellow Norwegians and a Swede, including childhood
friend, Erik Hesselberg (Odd Magnus Williamson), the navigator; radioman Knut
Haugland (Tobias Santelmann), a decorated World War II veteran; Torstein Raaby
(Jakob Oftebro), another radio expert; Herman Watzinger (Anders Baasmo
Christiansen), an engineer; and Bengt Danielsson (Gustaf Skarsgard), the
Swedish steward.
Co-directed
by Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg, Kon-Tiki faithfully chronicles their historic,
transoceanic voyage. Despite the fact that most of the picture’s dialogue is
English, it somehow earned a well-deserved Oscar nomination in the Best Foreign
Language Film category earlier this year.
The
men set sail in the spring of 1947, encountering storms, shark attacks, ship
rot, insubordination and a host of other challenges en route. The deliberately-paced production repeatedly
harks back to a bygone era when much of the Earth’s surface was yet to be explored.
Replete with breathtaking Pacific
panoramas shot on location, Kon-Tiki is worth watching for the captivating
visuals alone. However, the storytelling is solid, too, with all adding up to a
fitting tribute to the enviable exploits of the legendary Thor Heyerdahl.
Excellent
(4 stars)
Rated PG-13 for violence
In English, Norwegian, Swedish and French with
subtitles
Running time: 118 minutes
Distributor: The
Weinstein Company
To see a trailer for Kon-Tiki, visit:
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