The Norwegian movie about the Norwegian adventurer and scientist Thor Heyerdahl is finally getting UK release. The critics are overwhelmingly positive.
Two years after it first debuted, Oscar-nominated Kon-Tiki will finally be seen by UK cinemagoers. This is a visually stunning film about the real-life adventurer Thor Heyerdahl. Like Lindbergh’s transatlantic solo flight or John Glenn’s maiden orbit in space, Heyerdahl’s maritime journey captured the public’s insatiable need for heroes who succeed against the odds.
The “Kon-Tiki” movie was critically acclaimed around the world and nominated for an Oscar, Golden Globe and European Film Award. It won four Norwegian Academy Awards including the People’s Choice Award for the two directors, Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg.
Kon-Tiki received its world premiere at the Norwegian International Film Festival in August 2012 before going on a festival run that included Toronto, Berlin and London.
“Brilliantly shot in a rugged National Geographic-like way by the cinematographer Geir Hartly Andreassen, it captures the sailors’ feelings of both awe and terror about their self-inflicted predicament . Some of the best moments in the film, however, are those away from the raft – the scenes of Thor and his wife in the South Pacific early in their marriage or the New York-set scenes in which publishers pour scorn on the would-be explorer’s ideas,” according to the British paper The Independent.
The paper The Telegraph calls the movie “heroically mad”. What comes across best is an awe of the elements, and the near-hallucinatory sensory experience of spending this much time at sea, with the sun blazing down, and the beards growing as thick and gingery as roof-thatch,” writes Tim Robey.