The Last Place on Earth
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Movie Reviews of The Last Place on Earth
Movie Review: Lessons For Life
Summary: 5 Stars
Some of the most compelling and valuable lessons anyone will ever learn are in "The Last Place On Earth". Not just an adventure film or even history, the lessons taught here will serve everyone well in life. Absolutely brilliant.Movie Review: Really binding
Summary: 5 Stars
A very comprehensive background to this race was portrait in an unbiased way.
I suggest that viewers make sure they have enough time to watch the latter parts in one viewing. It really is gripping and has high impact!
Movie Review: Riveting.
Summary: 5 Stars
Both Scott and Amundsen had towering egos. Only one of them also had sensibility. That made the difference.Movie Review: Superb Iconoclasm
Summary: 4 Stars
Superb dramatization of Roland Huntford's iconoclstic book of Scott and Amundsen making for the South Pole. The acting is first-rate, with veterans (Stephen Moore, Max von Sydow) and (then) rising talent (Michael Maloney, Hugh Grant) enduring some hardships in Antarctic-like conditions. There was no stinting on this production. The only problem with the script is its determination to tarnish Scott. It not only has to make him a bungler and -- in extreme cases -- a fool, it makes him mean and dominated by his wife (perhaps he went to the pole to die just to get away from her)One caveat: Since Huntford's book new evidence has thrown his interpretation of events into doubt. Huntford is a first-rate biographer of polar explorers (Nansen, Shakleton). He seems to be determinedly anti-Scott. But Scott's expedition was meticulously planned, employing the latest of science and technology; his use of ponies was not the failure depicted here. He was not as mercurial and indecisive as this drama depicts him. Nor was Amundsen so saintly and all-knowing as depicted here. In an effort to give Amundsen "his due" they thought it necessary to bury altogether the already fading repuation of a heroic explorer who had a run of bad luck (as Amundsen had a run of good luck -- and neither man could budget for luck).
It would be interesting to see a miniseries of this quality that shows Amundsen as a hero and Scott as a tragic hero in light of the new evidence of climatology, based on recent books by Diana Preston and Susan Solomon. There's no reason to take anything away from Amundsen by saying he benefitted from a run of luck Scott lacked. It's too bad this show, following Huntford's thesis but without the corroborating detail, becomes, in the end, not merely a cynical exercise in iconoclasm, but perhaps in character assassination.
Still, for what it is, it's first-rate. But it should be released with a companion disk showing a 2002 "Secrets of the Dead" program that tries to rectify the record on Scott. Scott made mistakes -- the worst was probably taking seaman Evans on the last leg, which was an early bit of "diversity" on his part. But he wasn't quite the monster Martin Shaw devolves into.
Movie Review: The ultimate drama of Polar adventure
Summary: 4 Stars
The production values make you feel like you are going along for the journey to the South Pole, and the acting is quite evocative. For me, there were so many memorable scenes, notably Cecil Meares's embittered but principled rant about Scott's unfitness to lead, the Amundsen's brothers cemetary scene, and any of the scenes with the gallant "Titus" Oates. It is enjoyable to see so many Norwegian actors in one place,and such beautiful scenery. The only flaw with this otherwise excellent mini-series is the incessant harping on Scott's incompetence and arrogance, which makes the movie seem one-sided and unfair, even if most of criticisms of Scott are accurate.