Nova Zembla

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).

The very clever thing about this picture is that Reinout Oerlemans got so much money for making it, and so much praise for having made it, when - as seen by the result - he had no idea what he was doing. If he actually did direct the performance of the actors, he steered them in the wrong direction. From the looks of it, he just let them do whatever they could think of. Many a time not the best way to go. Reinout seemingly never watched a technically good production, as aired daily on televisions around the world, because technically this film is a dud. Lighting is very much below par. Dutch films of the seventies got away with it, maybe even eighties. But nowadays this is a big no no. As far as editing it concerned: I don't know what stake Reinout had in that part of the post production process, but it is worse than any amateur could have done. Maybe I am too close to this subject, being an editor myself. But someone with some sense should have stopped this senseless shredding of scenes. So: no directing of actors, no directing of cutting, and no directing of lighting are the obvious drawbacks that immediately catch your eyes. In fact, this picture scores so badly on these points, that I too could not keep watching. Too bad, because the story itself has all the hallmarks of a great picture.

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!

The movie starts interesting and one might be hoping for an interesting adventure. But unfortunately it totally breaks down. Nothing is happening anymore, it gets only extremely boring and predictable. All the characters are so blunt and uninteresting. You do not care at all for the characters and approximately in the middle you just start to skip further and further and still, you do not miss anything. I do not want to spoil something here, but the ending is totally predictable and cliche. No character development at all, it is really sad to produce something like that. It should have been totally foreseeable, just by reading the script to understand, that this can only go south (although they are going north actually).

A terrible movie. The first Dutch 3D movie is a big disaster. It's overrated, the movie is to slow and the storyline to thin. The actors are below average especially Doutzen Kroes. She's not a actress, just a beautiful model. The beginning of the movie is hopeful but after 20 minutes it's over. The 3D effects are not that good. You must use these kind of effects in movie with a spectacular storyline. This movie is to boring and there is not one moment where you can say "wow". I know it's very difficult the tell something about the rich history of Holland but I'm not sure if that is what the director wanted. He just wanted to make the first Dutch 3D movie, that's it. Overall......stay at home and maybe you consider a DVD rent in a couple of months.