War cinema could not be completely the same after the first 27 minutes of Saving Private Ryan. The best, however crudely realistic, war sequence in the 129 years of cinema history. So heartbreaking and overwhelming that, in some way, it damaged the rest of the film: it is impossible to maintain this intolerable tension (it is essential to see and hear it on the big screen) throughout the entire film. But I have said that war cinema was not completely the same again because, as a consolidated cinematographic genre, it continued to produce works that were already They couldn’t ignore those 27 minutesbut he also did not have to renounce a tradition that, let’s say, is somewhere between testimonial and adventurous (when not spectacularly exploiting, yes, with intelligence, violence and cruelty as the master of excess Robert Aldrich did with another turning point of the genre: twelve of the gallows) that from the silent era has produced a handful of masterpieces and hundreds of very estimable films, some more and others less conventional.
It is along these lines that this good war film directed by an excellent craftsman who debuted in the feature film with Returning Home (2015), a film that could be said to be post-war that dealt with the difficult reintegration into civilian life of a combatant in Afghanistan, and then touched, always correctly and sometimes with notable success, on suspense (Late Summer2016), the family melodrama (Rett Vest2017), the policeman (The Outlaws2019), the biography (munch2020) or terror (Possession2022).
The Arctic Convoy It has the qualities of the best artisanal war films. The first, to disseminate heroic actions that are not very well known (with a little or a lot of fiction), as was done The Telemark Heroes (a film for which I have a special appreciation for being the last one completed by the great Anthony Mann) with the attack by the Norwegian resistance on the Telemark facilities to stop the Nazi advances in obtaining the atomic bomb. I remember it among many others due to territorial affinity, since The Arctic Convoy It also has solitary as its theme fight against the nazis of the Norwegian merchant mariners who, like the members of the resistance, rose up against the invader, ignoring the cowardice of their collaborationist government.
The historical episode that this film discloses is that of the arctic convoysthe fleets that between 1941 and 1945 left from the United States, the United Kingdom and Iceland to bring weapons, equipment and food to the Soviet troops, sailing from the Atlantic to the Arctic to reach the Russian ports of Archangel and Murmansk, avoiding the mines and facing the German navy and aviation.
The second quality of this film is to tell the story of one of these heroic Norwegian merchantmen with a content, serious style and, in the best sense of the word, conventionalthat is, alternating the detail that multiplies the risk of the mission – the decision of the Norwegian captain to continue forward after the convoy dispersed and losing the protection of the warships – with the study of the Tense relations between the crew due to the differences in temperament and characters, aggravated by the risky situation that confronts the captain and those, with his second in command, who believe they must return to the port as they lack protection; and the well-filmed attacks on the convoy, because the spectacle and excitement of combat are an essential part of these films
At all levels – historical disclosure of a fact worth knowing, dramatic tension in the claustrophobic and threatened universe of the ship, character study, action scenes and interpretations – It works well this sober, entertaining and effective film that highlights heroism in a just war.
