If you haven’t picked a favorite movie for the month yet, against the ice should be on the list of your top pick. The movie is about two explorers who battle harsh weather in the ice, wild attacks from the bears, hunger, and hopelessness when they are left by a ship and other crews who accompany them into the exploration mission to safeguard a section of Greenland against being taken over by Americans. Against the ice is one of the finest historical survival films on Netflix based on Danish explorers Ejnar Mikkelsen (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and Iver Iversen (Joe Cole). The duo attempted were in a mission to prove that Greenland was one, which would negate the claim of the North-Eastern part of the country by the United States. Most importantly, this is a film inspired by true events.
The film opens with the return of captain Mikkelsen from an expedition they had undertaken in search of the findings made by the previous explorers. However, his companion, Jorgensen, comes with severe frostbite that the crews decapitate his toes. During the trip, the captain only found a map and a journal showing the cairn’s location, which is a stone pile that stores the documents that prove whether Greenland is one. Despite the woes and the challenges encountered in the first exploration, the captain announces that he will be making another trip into the ice to find the cairn and for the evidence to protect his country. Since Jorgensen cannot accompany the captain for the second time, he asks for a volunteer, and Iversen, after the crew members’ hesitation, volunteers. The captain agrees after careful thought. The duo takes off the long journey, only to meet their first hurdle with the loss of Bjorn, Iversen’s favorite dog, and part of their food supply in an accident. After a few months of struggle into the ice, the duo finds the cairn, where the proof is located, which is in the form of a map that shows that the channel the Americans claimed divided Greenland does not exist.
The duo celebrates that they have accomplished their mission, and they embark on the journey to return to Alabama and claim Greenland as a whole. Their return is tough. A bear attacks the captain, but Iversen comes from hunting to his rescue. He had drowned in the lake below the ice surface when the bear fell and broke the ice surface.
They destroyed some of their equipment to ease the loads and move faster as they trod on. However, they reach a point where they fear their survival. Thus, they build a cairn and put their findings 200 miles from Alabama for someone else to locate it if they die. When the two finally return to Alabama, they find that the ship has been wrecked and used the parts to construct small huts.
To their shock, the entire crew of Alabama is nowhere to be found. They fled the area as their ship had been shattered by ice, and some whalers found them. However, they were supposed to wait till August for Mikkelsen and Iversen to return. The captain dreams that their cairn was attacked by a bear and asks Iversen if they should go back and collect the evidence. Although Iversen insists that they leave a note, the captain insists they do not have time. They go and find that a bear tried to destroy their cairn, but the documents were safe. In return, they find that the crew members cam for rescue and never found them, so they left. They stay in Alabama with no hope for returning home since even the government is unwilling to send another crew for rescue. After months of pleading, a crew is sent, only to find the dying, hopeless explorers trying to survive their last days without food and under extreme threat of attack by the bears.
