The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition

Shackleton's third and last journey to the Pole in this documentary. We avoid talking heads and instead immerse ourselves in the arduous experience of traversing icy wastes. It has all the staples of polar exploits as have seeped into the popular imagination; valiant human endeavor, pitilessly harsh nature that cares none for our feeble attempts to cross it, scenes of increasing despair and privation, endured nonetheless with stoic composure.

They were the moon landings of their time. Crews setting out with lofty aims of expanding the map of human knowledge, broadening horizons. What captivated audiences back home was either more prosaic or more poetic; will they make it alive, human bravery in an alien cosmos, the attending mystery of venturing in uncharted territory.

One part of the film comprises actual footage of the expedition shot by a cameraman who was among the crew, really exciting (silent film) footage of the ship being crunched by the ice, desperately futile attempts to haul it out, playing with their trusted dogs, their makeshift camps as they have to go out on foot. The second part shows modern enactments, presumably captures views like they would have stumbled through, whether or not the very same locales. It's actually South Georgia later. But how different the visual regions when charged with knowledge that we're actually seeing into things as they happened.

I remember being enthralled as a kid by a book on polar misadventures. It was about an earlier expedition - the Discovery - but very much the same grimly claustrophobic experience. (What I couldn't know as a kid was that so much of my book's power came from the notion that these were things that actually happened.) It was the kind of story that makes you freeze simply to read, glad for home.

I have a quite different response these days than simply being aghast at what a cold universe it is out there.

See, these people ventured full of dreams. They were broken just as they were starting, shipwrecked in the early stages. Can you imagine the kind of disappointment that shakes you to your core? To know your dreams are quashed, your expedition is a complete failure. The same tortuous effort you expected to muster in the course of making history will now have to be spent just making it back alive.

So, you expected life to go one way, it went another. What now? Now dust yourself off and come back to us with a story of making a full return from the edge.

I have read several books about Shackleton's amazing expedition to Antarctica. I first became aware of the story from a PBS documentary several years ago, and being amazed by the story of survival and endurance, sought out books for more of the story. As a teacher I have used parts of this story as examples of leadership, enduring hardship, teamwork, loyalty, service, and hope. Being so familiar with this story, I wasn't sure what would be new in the film, but there was plenty there for me to enjoy and still learn about. I found it interesting that the descendants of survivors consistently said that their relatives, as is common from many trying circumstances, rarely talked about the events. It was also great to see the pictures I have seen over and over again put into a format where I could see them on a big screen. Even more amazing is the surviving film footage from the expedition. The preservation of this footage is wonderful, and in conjunction with the newly filmed footage of the unchanged antarctic landscape, gives you a better understanding of the wilderness these men were up against. Shackelton is portrayed as the excellent leader that he was, but is not presented as an infallible genius. He was a man who demonstrated amazing qualities in difficult circumstances, and he was a man who understood the burden of his leadership and the importance for getting his men home safely. If you've never heard of Shackleton, you are in the same boat (pun intended), as my wife, who was completely new to Shackleton's story. She loved the film as well, and was fascinated by the story. So if you are well aware of the story, or totally new to it, I highly recommend this story of survival and endurance.

This is the most unbelievable TRUE story I have ever seen! Thank God I walked into it not knowing anything about Shackleton or the cataclysmic expedition he and his men endured for almost two years of their lives; I was mesmerized by the tale and STUNNED by the conclusion!

Without a doubt, Sir Ernest Shackleton is one of the bravest, loyal, and awe-inspiring men I have ever heard of. This documentary does everything right in trying to tell his (and his crew's) story without sensationalizing or mythifying his character. Use of actual still and motion picture photography from the doomed expedition, letters from the crew, interviews and stories with grandchildren of the ship-men, new footage of the original Antarctic sites, and a beautifully written and delivered narration (by Liam Nieson) are blended together seemlessly to transport the viewer back in time, and into the terror that was the voyage of The Endurance.

Although Kenneth Branagh's SHACKLETON (2002) was a good effort and a fine telling, it truly could not capture the real tension, anticipation, expectation and real-life drama in the way this documentary did throughout (I found Branagh's version often played on obvious audience manipulators, ie., heavy-handed dialogue, hammered musical scoring, camera indulgence, etc.).

9/10. ENDURANCE is the greatest example of TRUTH being stranger than fiction, and so much more compelling!

If you need something to remind you how incredible, brave and courageous people can be under the most impossible conditions, there are few better places to explore than the hell on earth experienced by Shackleton and his band of adventurers and how they escaped its frozen grasp.

The Endurance is a truly fascinating account of Sir Ernest Shackleton's failed Antarctic expedition of 1914-1916. Shackelton was an adventurer looking for greatness in perhaps the last great uncharted portion of the earth at that time. He set out with 27 other adventurous young men (mostly from the UK) in a modest ship bound for the icy world of Antarctica. Their goal, once they got there, would be to walk across the continent and claim it for England. The South Pole had already been discovered, but apparently that was not enough to stake a claim to the entire continent at that time.

Shackleton is described as a man who admittedly "was not really good at anything". He was simply looking for prominence in one of the last places one could find it at that time. The crew, an assortment of various sailors and craftsmen, were warned of the dangers and low pay of such a venture. However the chance of gaining acclaim for accomplishing such a feat was enough to get hundreds of men to sign up. The crew were chosen and the boat was set to sail at the outset of WWI. Shackleton actually offered to postpone his mission and donate his ship The Endurance to the war effort, but the government let him go, anyway. Ironically, the ship never even made it to Antacrtica before things went to hell. Nobody from this party ever set foot on the continent.

About 100 miles from the coast, the boat became hopelessly stuck in pack ice. Shackleton made the decision to wait until the following spring when the ice would break up to resume the trip. Before spring could come, however, The Endurance would be crushed by the ice. The crew were forced to shoot their sled dogs to save food rations. The last of the dogs were actually eaten by the crew. The crew were forced to then drag the remaining life boats several miles to open water where they would then have to island-hop their way to civilization in some of the coldest and most choppy seas on earth. Along the way, the group is splintered in three parts, as it just becomes impossible to transport so many men in the tiny lifeboats. Somehow, over the span of nearly two years, Shackleton and his men are eventually all rescued. There are some incredible individual acts of heroism, and even an odd case of mutiny along the way. But Shackleton's leadership and confidence always seems to keep the group alive.

Once the men return home, they find that their own heroism has been dwarfed by so many men who had given their lives on the battlefields of WWI. Many of Shackleton's crew enlist in the army to almost certain death, and one is left to wonder about the logic behind it all. To stay alive through impossible circumstances for nearly two years, then go out and give your life for one of the most pointless conflicts in human history? People's attitudes must have been somewhat different back then.

The film is a visual treat. Still and moving footage from the actual expedition is inter-cut with current shots of the areas these men traveled through. The scenery is breathtaking, and you get a real feel for how desperate these mens' circumstances really were. Liam Neeson narrates, and he gives the material even further dignity. After watching the film, you can't help but realize how insignificant we humans are in the scope of the natural world. How any of these men made it back alive is a miracle. Nature lives by its own rules, and any time we humans attempt to conquer it, we run the risk of falling victim to its indifference to our plight.

9 of 10 stars.

The Hound