Jan Baalsrud in 1943 was a Norwegian commando involved in running guns from the Shetland Islands to the Norwegian resistance fighters. His fishing smack was intercepted by a German patrol boat and sunk. All of his colleagues were killed, but Baalsrud managed to leap overboard, losing one boot, and swim through the icy waters of the fjord to land, pursued on sea and on land by enemy soldiers. After he climbed onto the shore, his uniform froze solid and encased his body in ice.
It didn't get better for Baalsrud for months. If you can imagine any catastrophe associated with snowy mountains in brutal winter weather, he went through it -- snow blindness, avalanches, frostbite, gangrene. A manhunt was underway and Baalsrud became a symbol of the Norwegian resistance. He entered a kind of underground railway, the kind used to help slaves escape from the South before the Civil War, with lots of spots where the rails aren't connected and somebody has to schlepp him through the wilderness. .
If I may, I'll just quote a summary of Baalsrud's tribulations from the New York Times Magazine, otherwise I'd just have to paraphrase it.
"What happened over those nine weeks remains one of the wildest, most unfathomable survival stories of World War II. Baalsrud's feet froze solid. An avalanche buried him up to his neck. He wandered in a snowstorm for three days. He was entombed alive in snow for another four days and abandoned under open skies for five more. Alone for two more weeks in a cave, he used a knife to amputate several of his own frostbitten toes to stop the spread of gangrene. He spent the last several weeks tied on a stretcher, near death, as teams of Norwegian villagers dragged him up and down hills and snowy mountains. By the end, Baalsrud was less a hero than a package in need of safe delivery, out of Nazi hands. For decades, his escape made him into a Norwegian national folk hero."
It's an enthralling story of endurance. As a film it's virtues are mixed. There are stunning shots of snowy landscapes, blindingly white, with morbid black crags sticking out of them. The acting is passable, no more than that, although anyone who wants to take a peek at a generic Nordic face ought to check out Henny Moan as the wife of one of Baalsrud's helpers -- sharp-featured, determined, slope nosed, and pretty. The editing isn't so hot. There isn't enough sense of where we are or what's going on or how much time has passed. There are some images I still can't decode.
You know what? This is a heroic tale, an epic story, and it needs to be remade by a sensitive and talented director. It wouldn't be simply the story of a lone man overcoming odds, a Scandinavian Hercules. It would be the story of an entire network, with the people at one end complete strangers to those at the other end, except for a dim spirit of national identity.
It didn't get better for Baalsrud for months. If you can imagine any catastrophe associated with snowy mountains in brutal winter weather, he went through it -- snow blindness, avalanches, frostbite, gangrene. A manhunt was underway and Baalsrud became a symbol of the Norwegian resistance. He entered a kind of underground railway, the kind used to help slaves escape from the South before the Civil War, with lots of spots where the rails aren't connected and somebody has to schlepp him through the wilderness. .
If I may, I'll just quote a summary of Baalsrud's tribulations from the New York Times Magazine, otherwise I'd just have to paraphrase it.
"What happened over those nine weeks remains one of the wildest, most unfathomable survival stories of World War II. Baalsrud's feet froze solid. An avalanche buried him up to his neck. He wandered in a snowstorm for three days. He was entombed alive in snow for another four days and abandoned under open skies for five more. Alone for two more weeks in a cave, he used a knife to amputate several of his own frostbitten toes to stop the spread of gangrene. He spent the last several weeks tied on a stretcher, near death, as teams of Norwegian villagers dragged him up and down hills and snowy mountains. By the end, Baalsrud was less a hero than a package in need of safe delivery, out of Nazi hands. For decades, his escape made him into a Norwegian national folk hero."
It's an enthralling story of endurance. As a film it's virtues are mixed. There are stunning shots of snowy landscapes, blindingly white, with morbid black crags sticking out of them. The acting is passable, no more than that, although anyone who wants to take a peek at a generic Nordic face ought to check out Henny Moan as the wife of one of Baalsrud's helpers -- sharp-featured, determined, slope nosed, and pretty. The editing isn't so hot. There isn't enough sense of where we are or what's going on or how much time has passed. There are some images I still can't decode.
You know what? This is a heroic tale, an epic story, and it needs to be remade by a sensitive and talented director. It wouldn't be simply the story of a lone man overcoming odds, a Scandinavian Hercules. It would be the story of an entire network, with the people at one end complete strangers to those at the other end, except for a dim spirit of national identity.