In “White Silence: The Layers Beneath Against the Ice” (2022)
When 2022’s Against the Ice was added to Netflix, it appeared to be another survival film focused on men trapped in a frozen tundra, although those who watched it closely had begun to feel something else. Similarly to Into the Ice, the film offered the viewer a battle against the elements, but more deeply, it offered a meditation on loneliness, pride, and the relationship between human ambition and humility. The film, directed by Peter Flinth and based on Ejnar Mikkelsen’s true-life arctic ordeal, is less about conquering the arctic and much more about surviving the silence that exists in one’s inner self.
While epic film viewers and fans of survival dramas tilted the film toward The Revenant and The Terror because it focused on physical endurance and touted ” Based on true events” a then-unseen striking montage of the Scandinavian North, the focus of the film was something else entirely, and it was the stark, psychological coldness that lingered.
A Journey Into Madness and Meaning
The story’s main character is seasoned explorer Mikkelsen played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. He aims to prove that Greenland is one contiguous land mass, a claim that would undermine American ownership of its northeastern part. Mikkelsen joins then poses a risk with Iver Iversen (Joe Cole), a young and inexperienced mechanic, on an expedition to claim lost documentation of evidence from a previously stranded crew.
Initially, the story seems straightforward, but what is overwhelmed is the descent, not merely into frostbite and starvation, but into the slow collapse of sanity. Months, then years, begin to unfold. In a frosty environment, one undergoes a human and psychological struggle. When the landscape is expanded and becomes a hollow and empty arena, one realizes a human weakness. The cross of Mikkelsen’s transcend visions of lost lovers and hallucinated strangers and the iceberg of memories is a deep spirituality in the work. While shut, the memories remain vivid and are not easily placated. No doubt the ice is a testament.
One noteworthy aspect is the way Flinth avoids the use of exaggerated drama in his work. Rather than glorifying the absurdities of survival, the film posits, almost as an afterthought, what compels someone to persist when there is no audience to witness the struggle.
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau’s Quiet Transformation
To Coster-Waldau, who not only starred in the film but also co-wrote and produced it, Against the Ice was certainly not just another film. To the actor, it was an invaluable opportunity to tell a story devoid of the glitz and glamour he is used to. Coster-Waldau is a household name, famous for his role as the troubled and complex Jaime Lannister on the hit show Game of Thrones, and as he states in numerous interviews, “I wanted something raw, human, and forgotten by history,” a stark contrast to the storylines he is typically associated with.
Both actor and character strikingly share the same narrative. After the chaos that came with the hit show, he, like Mikkelsen, needed to prove something to himself after stepping down from the limelight.
In Arctic surroundings, he looks so tired because he genuinely was tired. The shoot was in Iceland and Greenland, where he had to suffer for the artwork. Weather conditions involved temperatures below -20°C, and the cast had to perform while being exposed to the elements with thin shelters. The frost on their faces is not the result of makeup; it is from surviving. ‘Some days, we didn’t perform, we just suffered,’ he admitted.
Coster-Waldau’s Mikkelsen is also tormented by his sanity slipping away and the ghosts of the discoveries he has made. You can see in his face the pain of a man who has pursued proud legacies only to realize that nature is not branched with the legacies.
Joe Cole’s Heart in the Cold
Opposite Coster-Waldau is Joe Cole, who brings warmth and vulnerability to Iver Iversen, the young mechanic who joins the expedition almost by accident. Cole is best known for his intense roles in Peaky Blinders and Black Mirror. Cole is a highly talented individual who was able to soften the screen with his boyish sincerity.
Cole in real life, similar to his character look to Iver, described as innocent and believing in something bigger than himself, was pursuing emotionally, as opposed to physically, challenging roles. Iver becoming the soul of the story, is the human connection that, as McKellen notes, keeps the tether to sanity.
Their connection begins with polite formalities, weakly folding then slipping, to a quiet brotherly love, not rooted in speech, but cemented in the silence of trauma. In painful, collapsed, faith and friendship, and snow Mikkelsen, hallucinating Iver and the snow dying, to Iver in snow faith is buried. Later, when Iver re-appears, it is not a twist, but a resurrection, almost biblical in tone.
Cole and Coster-Waldau, during the freezing shoot, were reportedly inseparable, finding exhaustion and humor in their misery as they cooked together, off-screen. That bond beautifully translate onscreen. A chemistry that doesn’t rely on the dialogue but on the connection, seen in glances that say, we’re still here.
The Ice as a Character of Its Own
For every cinematographer, Torben Forsberg deserves recognition for rendering the Arctic a living, sinister character. The striking imagery evokes a range of emotions. The mood of the landscape is simultaneously sublime and threatening — gorgeous, yet deadly. Every blizzard seems to pass sentence, every interval of silence to pass a verdict.
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