An eerie, ghostly light settles over the opening images of Arctic Drift, set against the vocal stylings of Iris Thorarins. The song is the Arctic anthem Vet Konungur., composed by the Icelandic film composer Biggi Hilmars, and it is gorgeous.
The ice-sculpted landscape viewed from a cathedral-like sky above reflects a savage beauty, but this soul-stirring sight comes with a cautionary and terrible caveat.
The vast Arctic Ocean that cools our planet and shapes weather patterns around the world is changing, warming at a rate that’s already defying scientists’ most pessimistic projections.
Arctic Drift, Ashley Morris’ documentary account of the 2020 MOSAiC expedition, followed the 12,000-ton research icebreaker Polarstern on a 12-month odyssey of discovery, six months of year trapped in heavy sea ice during the height of the polar winter — all so that scientists could monitor the prevailing ocean currents, measure the thinning ice and examining the myriad forms of sea life that survive some of the harshest conditions known to earth science.
The MOSAiC expedition was the single largest Arctic expedition in human history, and involved some 500 researchers, scientists and support crew from more than 20 countries, countries that included Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, the US, Denmark, France and, yes, Russia.
The scientists represented more than 80 institutions of research and higher learning. The Polarstern itself hailed from Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute and the Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research; the acronym MOSAiC itself stands for Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate. The acronym MOSAiC is a long-distance call, as the old saying goes, but you get through in the end.
What sets Arctic Drift apart from the pack is the way this gentle, graceful film reveals the emotional tug, awe and dignity of nature at the polar regions, an awe that permeates nearly every single frame.
©Esther Horvath MOSAiC Expedition Arctic Drift
The 4K cinematography, Hilmars’ evocative background score, UK filmmaker Ashley Morris’ assured directing — nearly everything about Arctic Drift is a work of art and a labour of love. Polar bears drop by the camp in the middle of the 24-hour polar night, and researchers are torn between chasing the curious bears away or playing a ga e of hide-and-watch. The bears are inquisitive, not dangerous, but they can turn dangerous in a heartbeat.
The Arctic currents are unrelenting, even where the ice is packed in at its densest, and yet GPS readings tell the scientists they are being pulled miles at a time, even though to the naked eye they appear to be trapped in static ice. The currents are not behaving the way they should.
Arctic Drift is compelling on so many levels, both as drama — will the scientists survive their mad, self-imposed exile? — and as science. MOSAiC was created to do a deep dive into the still misunderstood climate forces at work in the planet’s polar regions, and to answer unanswered questions.
How much ice is in the Arctic Ocean, anyway? It seems a disarmingly simple question, but the answer is complicated. Deceptively so. And elusive. Satellites tell us wide an area of ice can be at any given time, but how thick that ice is, and how it shapes itself and moves with the ocean currents, is less well known. Satellites can’t tell how thick the ice is; they can’t differentiate between ice and what might simply be snow lying on top of that ice. It’s a harrowing and yet achingly beautiful journey.
“You feel like you’re walking on the moon,” Julienne Stroeve, one of the remote sensor operators tasked with measuring the ice at its thickest, and thinnest, points. Stroeve confesses she has nearly 30 years of scientific experience in the far north, “but it’s always been during daylight.”
©Esther Horvath MOSAiC Expedition Arctic Drift
Bearing witness during the polar night, when it’s dark 24 hours a day, is almost literally an otherworldly experience , Stroeve says, her voice a near hush. “Because even if you’re a scientist working in the Arctic, you don’t get to experience that, you don’t get to see that.”
“That’s amazing … that’s very cool, my first polar fox,” she whispers, just moments later. when an Arctic fox skips and sniffs its way through the camp, muzzle down, nose to the snow, then skitters off into the darkness as quickly as it arrived.
Before the expedition — and the film — ends, COVID-19 will intervene from the outside world, and the scientists will face a difficult personal choice: whether to go home and be home with their families during the worst of the pandemic, hopefully to return at some nebulous, uncertain later date, or stay where they are. For most, it’s a hard decision.
Arctic Drift navigates the not always easy-to-find line between hard science, the beauty of the natural surroundings, and raw human emotion. Vishnu Nandan, a remote-sensor radar engineer and post-doctoral fellow from the University of Calgary neatly sums up the spirit of both the MOSAiC expedition and his own reason for being, just moments before the scientists mark Christmas Day in the High Arctic. “‘Vishnu’ means ‘preserver of the planet,’” he says quietly, with a shy smile, “and that’s my goal. I’m here to protect the planet. To protect everyone.”
God bless and good speed to that.
A trimmed, cut-down version of Arctic Drift aired in October on PBS NOVA and is available on YouTube, the NOVA’s website and on the PBS app. The longer, more complete version is streaming on Amazon Prime in Canada, and can be found on other streaming sites around the globe.
All images ©Esther Horvath MOSAiC Expedition Arctic Drift
