After the opening of the Fantasia International Film Festival Polaris, by KC Carthew is a unique work starring Viva Lee, Khamisa Wilsher and Muriel Dutil.
In the year 2144, the planet plunges into eternal winter. A young girl, Sumi (Viva Lee), survives in this harsh environment as best she can with the help of her “mother,” a polar bear, and guided by Polaris, the North Star. While she is captured by a group of women, she meets other inhabitants of the desolate planet after she manages to escape, including Muriel Dutil, another lone traveler.
“Polaris” is undoubtedly a work that appeals to the imagination and sensibilities of moviegoers. The dialogues, conducted entirely in an imaginary, untranslated language, consist of screams and guttural sounds that continually bring us back to a primary, animal and sensory level.
Writer-director KC Carthew (“The Sun at Midnight,” 2016) continues to disorient viewers by immersing them in a white immensity to better understand the connections between man and nature, especially with the presence of the bear understand. This surprising visual and intuitive language proves to be extremely effective and almost poetic, despite its obvious aesthetic connection to Mad Max.
We can’t help but think of Claire Denis’ “High Life” with Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche, even though the theme and tone are completely different. In both cases we lose our footing, in both cases we learn to understand a certain film language and in both cases we are fascinated by a captivating exercise in style.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5