Long Way North

Though the story, characters, and animation style points to it being based on a storybook or at least a legend, the 2015 French-Danish animated movie, Long Way North seems to be a completely made-up product with only certain inspiration coming from the real-life arctic explorer, Ernest Shackleton. With this in mind, the movie does bring back the 2D animation style that was sorely being missed then (and even more so now), telling its story in the art style very similar to children picture books which did help give what is essentially a very unknown film a unique visual style. However, while it brought back the 2D style for a brief moment, the movie around it isn’t anything that special to get hyped for. Set in 19th century Russia, a young Russian aristocrat named Sasha (voiced by Chloe Dunn) wishes to uncover her grandfather’s (voiced by Geoffrey Greenhill) lost ship when it set sail for the North Pole, and it (and her grandfather) never returned. To get there, she gets the help of Captain Lund (voiced by Peter Hudson) and his crew, setting sail off to find the ship and restore Sasha’s honor after disgracing her family, as well as the chance to find out what happened to her grandfather. For an otherwise forgotten-about movie made by lesser-known animation companies, it’s a shame that this movie couldn’t be more than a cliched story with a stylistic edge. With what could have been explored with this time period and concept, the film doesn’t ever go far enough into unknown territory and takes what could be a realistic story that contains a fantastical touch and muddles it together with ‘Disney princess’’ clichés to result in a very mediocre picture. This middle of the road movie allows for some pretty visuals, but without much substance keeping it together.

The story, from the get go, has so many familiar clichés that it’s almost possible to predict how the film will end right from the opening scene; a young girl with aspirations outside of her given role in society, a father figure too stubborn to allow such free-spiritedness and calls her a disgrace, an older figure who inspires her adventurous side and pushes her to continue on, and the trials and tribulation that she overcomes to become more independent and a true adventure.  They are all in this movie and are not used to enhance a stronger narrative, that is all the narrative has to offer, and due to the film not having an older source material (which may have used these cliches in an older time when they weren’t dated) to fall back on, it feels even more simplistic for something that should feel incredibly original. It doesn’t take those clichés to the next level, it’s just a repetitive trope that adds nothing but a recognizable element that can help push story’s further from, which leads to a horrible first act with bad dialogue, awkwardly slow animation, and an abundance of familiar scenes that never quite work right because of how painstakingly recognizable they are. The screenplay for this film written by Claire Paoetti, Patricia Valeix and Fabrice de Costill is just bad in almost every angle, and even way a moment has nice quiet atmosphere to it, it can’t shake a story that is so unimpressive. Thankfully, as soon as she gets on the road and starts to travel, the movie seems to abandon most of those aspects very quickly and starts to follow its own rules. While the film is still very simplistic, easy to predict and involves very little risks, the remaining portion of the film does feel more authentic and more unique from the beginning, leading to a few more likeable and even decently effective scenes, especially a scene near the end where she comes across her grandfather’s frozen body. The direction by Rémi Chayé makes the film slow-moving, yet effective so once the film gets to the quest. Though most of the element’s set-up in the first act are immediately thrown out once she sets sail, making the scenes even more pointless, leaving them behind was a smart move and heavily benefited the remaining product.

The characters are again very typical and feel like cut-outs from other children’s fairy tales. Sasha is like a mixture between a Disney Princess and Lara Croft, but without much of the intrigue. She’s perfectly passable as a lead character but isn’t interesting enough to be memorable. You’ve seen this kind of free-spirited fish-out-of-water archetype done several times before and nothing about the environment, her backstory or even her design make her feel any different from any other version of that archetype. Her family’s very generic, and the crew she sets out with aren’t even given that much of a role outside of one or two. Two characters in particular, the captain’s brother, Larson (voiced by Anthony Hickling) and a second mate who falls in love with Sasha, Katch (voiced by Tom Perkins). Both are given screen time and at least definable features, yet they never go anyway with either of them, so it just doesn’t allow any of these characters to even feel the least bit unique outside of their one-notes. The film’s remarkably short running time of only 80 mins (barely even passing the proper feature length movie marker) leaves many things left unanswered or not fleshed out. The captain of the ship is a little likeable in how far his pride will take him to even risking his own life for Sasha and the rest of his crew, even if the end results are very predictable for that kind of character (which is again very expected of this movie at this point). The voice actors all feel a little off in certain places. Chloe Dunn as Sasha handles herself the best, but all the others can be incredibly flat and robotic in moments, like they’re reading lines straight from the paper. This makes more sense since the film is in French language and was later dubbed for an English translation, which explains a lot of the stilted line reads with actors trying to match the mouth reads on an already hard to follow art style. The movie thankfully doesn’t have a villain or any opposing force other than nature, which is all this movie needs, and when the movie resorts to them surviving in the snow, freezing to death, and going insane due to it, it does become a bit more engaging, even if it’s only the last third.

The selling point for this movie is its animation style, feeling like one of the key reasons why this movie was made and one of, if it’s only, definable qualities. From a technical level, the style is very nice and incredibly good at capturing color. When the movie leaves a moment quiet and still and allows the visuals to tell the story, it’s some of the best moments of the film, including a nice opening credits sequence. The style really excels at still shots, but there comes the problem, the motion of the move is very inconsistent. In moments, the characters will move like chess pieces, with staggered jolts of motion that don’t feel realistic and feel slow and lethargic. The style works best in pictures books as the artistry can tell a story in a frame and really get creative and expressive with the image, but a full movie of that style would require a huge amount of effort, so some scenes look emotionless and flat while others look expressive and colorful. The movie doesn’t even have that much color outside of blue and white so the style can’t even go all out in showing some beautiful scenery (although having Sasha’s hair be yellow allows her to instantly stand out against those colors, so that is a nice touch). The mouth moments would sometimes be horribly out of sync with the words but that’s mostly during the first act and the problem would come from a dubbing issue. The style also leaves out the outlines of characters, leaving everyone feeling loose and not as structured as they should feel, often blending into the background and having no focus to direct upon. That wouldn’t be an issue if the characters moved in a manner that benefited that formless quality, but they move in a very realistic manner, so it just feels like a consequence of the type of animation rather than a specific choice. While the style is mishandled and not the best motion wise, it still has a visually pleasing look to it and allows for some nice imagery throughout the movie, as well as some memorable character designs.

Long Way North isn’t a movie that everyone will know about, it would be impressive if anyone would even know where to look for the movie, but for what it is, it’s entirely passable even if it is definitely confused even from the outside looking in (a French-Danish animated film telling a Russian story that was either voiced in French or later dubbed in English is a little bit of a mess itself). It’s a cliched product with more ambitious than substance and can get lost in its simplicity sometimes but behind it, there is clear passion within the product and may even entertain someone who’s looking for a simplified version of Lara Croft. It’s appreciated that it tried to tell a foreign story in a visually different manner, but considering how obscure this film is (not even to mention its quality), it doesn’t feel like it was able to make any statements. The story and characters are awfully generic, but not in a harmful way and when the movie starts it adventure, it does feel more like its own product and could have been an interesting adventure for children if they had more risks and upped the stakes a bit more. A few pretty images to look at and an hour to waste on a harmless narrative, nothing spectacular but perfectly fine for one viewing. Plenty of water to trend and ice to break, see if what’s underneath is worth it.