Review of Into the White (2012) by Cigs J — 10 Nov 2016

Directed: Petter Naess.

True story of two wartime foes - the crew of a British fighter and a German Bomber who shot each other down and landed up in the arctic wildernesses of Norway. You could not make it up - sometimes true life is more interesting.

Professonal film critics moan about the 'ponderous nature of the film' - well tough doo doo, real life is not a film for critics, who are paid money to write down their personal opinion in a literary idiom preferably with apposite comparisons and erudite filmology.

Both groups survive through the snow storms to end up in a single hunters' cabin, they can't get away from each other, so the ones with the pistols (Germans) declare that the British pair are now prisoners of war. But their isolation just highlights how ridiculous it is to impose the fictional idea of nationhood when only five of them exist in that closed world.

The isolation offers the film a chance to ask some basic questions "Why do you want to invade countries?" the Brit asks, German reply "You have invaded half the world, with the British Empire!" Fair point.

Both sides though are decent men - the only Nazi amongst them is the one with gangrene in his arm.

Eventually though, reality strikes in the form of Norwegian soldiers.

If you look at the credits though, it gives you the history of what happened to them afterwards and state that the British and German men who survived the subsequent war (most died), got in touch in 1977 and met each other once more as friends.