"Searching for ENDURANCE"
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What You Need To Know:
Every part of the ENDURANCE movie is exciting, both the current expedition and the Shackleton expedition. Restored, enhanced Shackleton film footage is quite amazing and informative. ENDURANCE is very moral and clean. Time and time again, Shackleton put his crew first and rescued them from dire circumstances. The movie has brief references to miracles and appeals to God, but otherwise downplays the Christian faith of Shackleton and his men. Also, the painful conditions in the Shackleton expedition may be too much for children and the faint of heart.
Content:
More Detail:
ENDURANCE is a National Geographic documentary about Ernest Shackleton’s famous Arctic expedition, which was a failure in one way and miraculous in another, as well as a 2022 expedition led by the venerable maritime archaeologist Mensun Bound with a team of scientists and others to find Shackleton’s sunken ship ENDURANCE under the Arctic ice. In many ways, ENDURANCE the movie is very moral and clean, but there are extreme, painful Arctic conditions which inflict extreme pain Shackleton’s crew.
There have been several movies about Ernest Shackleton’s polar expedition. One movie won a MOVIEGUIDE® Award. This excellent National Geographic movie reveals heretofore never-mentioned details of the expedition and uses restored footage that Shackleton himself had made during the 1914-17 expedition.
The movie starts explaining that Shackleton felt out of place in British society because his father was a farmer, although his father became a doctor. After trying several careers, the only thing Ernest was good at was exploration. The late 1800s and early 1900s were the age of exploration. Shackleton himself said, “difficulties are just things to overcome.” He joined Scott’s ill-fated polar expedition and was angry Scott was willing to sacrifice his men to achieve his goal, which Scott failed to acheive.
Finally, in 1914, just at the beginning of World War I, Shackleton organizes his own expedition to the South Pole. In response to his newspaper ad, he had thousands of people seeking to join the expedition. He made his choice based on character and not necessarily accomplishments.
The movie also looks at a 2022 team of scientists and exploders who want to find Shackleton’s sunken ship, the ENDURANCE. They have very detailed coordinates from Shackleton’s expedition, but they have only a few weeks to find the ENDURANCE before the Arctic ice makes any exploration impossible. This team tried once before but failed. However, they’ve designed a new remote-controlled sub to go beneath the ice to search for the ENDURANCE. Also, the team’s leader, venerable maritime archaeologist Mensun Bound, has made many extraordinary underwater discoveries.
Going back to Shackleton’s journey, the captain of the ship, Frank Worsley, wandered into Shackleton’s office by accident and many others had unique reasons for joining the expedition. The year of Shackleton’s expedition was one of the worst for cold and Antarctic ice. Eventually, Shackleton’s expedition can’t beat the winter conditions, and the ship gets frozen in the ice. Meanwhile, the 2022, expedition has a false discovery of what they think are the ruins of the ship. Everybody feels elated and therefore crushed when they realize this isn’t the ENDURANCE.
Will they discover the ship before the Arctic ice makes it impossible?
As far as Shackleton’s journey is concerned, if you don’t know the story, the ship eventually is crushed by the ice. Before it sinks, the men take what they can, including three rowboats, to try to make it across the ice to get to the nearest island, Elephant Island. What they find is that the ice flow rotates clockwise, so they’re continually going in the wrong direction. Eventually, they have to eat their dogs, cut down on what they have, giving up watches and any jewelry, but they still drag the boats. They realize it’s impossible to stay in Elephant Island. So, they take the rowboats on a perilous journey to another island, South Georgia, miles away, where there’s a whaling station. Will they make it?
Every part of the journey is perilous. The descriptions of the cold and the conditions are frightening. When they do make it to South Georgia Island, Shackleton and a few men try to do the impossible to cross the mountains to get to the whaling station, which proves to be almost as hazardous as the Arctic journey.
Every part of the ENDURANCE movie is exciting, both the current expedition and the Shackleton expedition. The restored and enhanced Shackleton footage, because he was prescient to understand the value of filmmaking, is quite amazing and informative. There’s also some live reenactments and some voice reenactments of the crew diaries being read by actors.
In the other filmed versions of Shackleton’s journey and the books, the Christian faith of Shackleton and the crew are clearly demonstrated. Sadly, this new version minimizes the spiritual, although there are references to an impossible miracle, appeals to God and a picture of the church at the whaling station. However, the movie is extremely moral and highly recommended for teenagers and above. The painful conditions may be too much for little children and the faint of heart.
