Nova Zembla - Unbekanntes Land

it is strange to define it. it is a homage to pioneers of geographic adventure, a history lesson, an inspired trip at the true essence of adventure, not ignoring the portrait of noble heroism ,but giving a realistic story . sure, using the precise expectations about artistic virtues, it is far to be a great movie. but it is a decent one. and this fact remains a significant good point. or,maybe, a reasonable portrait of brave men and theirs fight against nature.

The Age of Exploration (or age of Discovery). Those 200 years (more or less) from 1450 to 1650, when a few brave men coming from Western Europe, traveling in fragile wooden ships and armed with primitive fire weapons, basically conquered the world. It's strange that very few movies have been made out of that era. Perhaps this is so because this era is now a bit politically incorrect (since it many times involved Europeans invading and conquering Native people). But movies dealing with early polar exploration should not have such a problem, since there were few if any native people there. So here comes this fine film from the Netherlands that tells the true story of Willem Barents, the Dutch navigator that seeking a Northern route to China (Spain, being in war with the Netherlands at the time make it difficult for Dutch ships to go to the east through the Cape of Good Hope) reached in 1596 (more than three centuries before the North Pole was reached) the island of Nova Zembla in the High Arctic Sea, an island that is now a part of Russia. However, the ice soon broke the ship and the crew has to spend in the island a harrowing winter. Shot in 3D mostly in Iceland, this film is handsomely made, with a good, classic storytelling. The story is mostly told through the eyes of Gerrit de Veer, the young, inexperienced chronicler in the expedition. Famous Dutch model Doutzen Kroes has a small role, appearing mostly in flashbacks, as Gerrit's fiancé back in Holland (she was obviously hired because she was believed to be a box office draw, not because her character was really needed in the story).

While I think the 3D-effect in today's cinema should enhance the human experience to get a certain feeling of stepping right into the scene, the three dimensional engineers of the Nova Zembla crew are taking the effect way too far. The extreme shallow dept-of-field (DOF) of most of the scenes creates an very unnatural effect. Not like the human eye it would see. 3D in Nova Zembla brings unnecessary unsharpness to wide shots instead of crisp details. It reminds me more of early cartoons and anime/manga than state-of-the-art improvement of the modern cinema experience. A missed chance for Reinout...

On the other hand, the shots from above (like the viewing angle used in the shots where we can see the boat from above) are well filmed. And the 3D-effect while filming from a lower angle through the grass does a great job. But those are just minutes of the whole movie play time.

There are a lot of things that can be said about this (typically Dutch) movie. Without a doubt, the adventures of Willem Barentz during his third voyage to find a way around "the North" and his stay on Nova Zembla merited an epic movie.

Even though Reinout Oerlemans is a very inexperienced director the quality of the production is mostly "acceptable". Great camera-work in general and pretty decent acting.

The biggest problem with the movie, however, is the script.

It deviates from what really happened in so many places it defies belief. Why Reinout Oerlemans and Hugo Heinen would have strayed so far from the truth is difficult to understand as much of the real story would have added to the tension.

They completely missed the reason for Barentz to become stuck in the ice contrary to his previous two attempts in sailing through the arctic, for instance. There are many more examples of "truth is stranger than fiction" to be found in this movie.

In the end the movie is dull and not very engaging. Constantly giving the viewer the sense of missed opportunities by the script.

The true story of Willem Barentz' voyage could easily have beaten "Titanic" in terms of suspense and majesty. Instead, this attempt can only be called a mediocre, unnecessary and (in places) simpleminded distortion of reality.

Making a movie about such a 'big' event in Dutch history seems like a very good idea. But, after sitting down for sometime in the cinema i started to get bored. Then more bored and eventually I couldn't take anymore boredom and had to get up and leave the cinema. This is one of the worst movies I've seen in a long time! The storyline is disappointing, and doesn't seem to follow a clear path. The Characters are shallow, and the actors seem to take no effort to give some depth to their character. This would be a hard task anyway, since the conversations between the actors are so weak that it would be a big effort to make anything worthwhile come out.

The gorgeous Doutzen Kroes makes her first movie appearance with a weak performance. I am a big movie fan, but this one, in spite of all the buzz in the Netherlands, is best to avoid!