Meet the Ice Bears – the protagonists, so to speak, of Thierry Piantanida's and Thierry Ragobert's hymnodic nature documentary about the Arctic regions of your planet are mother Ice Bear and her two cubs. We watch those cubs being born in a dark hole in the snow in the middle of winter, and watch mother Ice Bear lick them tenderly and cradle them to sleep with a most contented expression on her face. We witness the moment when the two young ones experience their first day of sun, after several months of underground life, almost an extended pregnancy inside the womb of Mother Earth. Spring returns to the polar regions and family Ice Bear emerges from their hibernation. Weeks later, perhaps – although the exact timeline is not made explicit – one of the cubs tries to catch a seal baby which seems to have been abandoned by its mother – but mother seal returns in the nick of time and puts a rescue plan into practise, successfully. Young Ice Bear cup gets its paws wet trying to follow the prey into the ice hole, and it will take several more attempts until it manages to catch the first prey.

Then the camera swings round to more southerly regions, the tundra, where reindeer start their collective annual march north as if impelled by some imperceptible signal. By the thousands, they cross torrential rivers, steep gullies and mosquito-infested swamps, covering about 1000 miles before they finally reach the edge of the continent, stop at the ocean shore and rest to graze. If there is any apparent natural reason why they would be doing this, the commentator leaves us in the dark – but perhaps there isn't? Maybe the reindeer just like to look at the ocean and then have a picnic by the seashore in the middle of the Arctic summer? Maybe it is some reindeer religious ritual, a huge annual pilgrimage much like humans travel by the thousands to such holy places like Varanasi on the River Ganges, or the holy city of Mecca. The reindeer mothers have given birth to their young during the march, and a newborn foal may be expected to swim a river swollen with melted snow, or climb the steep side of a gully, or keep up with the swift pace of a reindeer herd's collective gallop, on the very first day of its life.

Other supporting roles are various kinds of sea mammal – a pod of Beluga whales hover in the water, looking at those strange creatures who are pointing their camera at them with a most quizzical expression in their benign faces. Their white quivering bodies make them appear like some alien angelic beings, perhaps similar to the kind which cinemagoers have previously encountered in James Cameron's The Abyss.
Then there are Narwals, who with their single twisted horn which grows from the middle of their brows, gave rise to the legend of the unicorn. They dance a happy dance in the water to give thanks for so much fish, and cross their mythical horns in a playful display of maritime swordsmanship.
We also meet the seal, the fox, and various species of birds – there is one kind whose name I didn't catch, which looks like it would have become the arctic penguin if it had ever actually given up flying. Even so, these birds look far more at home under water than they do in the air.

Midway through the movie, when summer has come, the camera plunges underneath the sheets of ice, where algae and plankton seem to have been growing from the empty sea. No CGI artist's imagination could top the variety and utter strangeness of life forms we see displayed through the microscope. There are things that glow in the underwater dark, and some display multicoloured lights crossing and re-crossing their zeppelin-shaped bodies much like big city neon signs. There are little winged beings that for all the world look like straight out of a Japanese book of anime.

Summer is melting off the Northern ice cape, and mother bear and her now adolescent cups have difficulty coping with the melting ice that breaks away under their heavy paws and lets them fall into one treacherous puddle after another, and just won't carry them any more. The Bears are clearly out of their element - the walrus on the other hand enjoys the sunny days at the beach and can't see any reason to be anything but lazy.

Then the sun goes down for the first time in three months, and everyone starts to leave. The birds take off, one kind after the other, and the reindeer, one assumes, start on their long march south. It is time for mother Ice Bear to let go of her cups. Having witnessed mother bear's farewell to her young, I dare anyone to still think that emotions are a privilege of the human race.

It comes as no surprise that the movie ends with a plea to try and stop the greenhouse effect and preserve those kingdoms of ice we have just travelled through, and their inhabitants. And what a heartfelt plea it is – without ever resorting to artificial humanization of the animals that appear throughout the movie, there is a clear sense that in their mysterious world more is happening than just a single minded search for food and mates. This is achieved only through the means of keen observation – sometimes, admittedly, aided by some judicious editing - and the mind boggles at the patience and stamina that must have been required to capture those precious and revealing moments on camera. This is what stays in the mind, more even than the immense visual beauty of the movie, which condenses the arctic experience into images of truly hypnotic power. I was reduced almost to tears by the sheer beauty and utter wonder of it all, and it must be a well crafted nature documentary indeed which can achieve that. Watch it. And make everyone else you know watch it too. And then go and do your bit to preserve what you have seen.

review written by Asni - contact me

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last updated: 4 September, 2006