Flight of the Eagle (Ingenjör Andrées luftfärd, "Engineer Andree's Flight") is a 1982 film directed by Jan Troell.
It is about S.A. Andree's Arctic balloon expedition
in 1897. In an age of exploration where the last challenges were to reach the North and South Poles, S.A. Andree (Max von Sydow) had the idea of flying a balloon over the North Pole. A balloon would of course avoid the problems of hauling sledges over the awful terrain of the Arctic ice pack, and it would be much quicker, reaching the Pole in only a couple of days. Skeptics doubt Andree's idea, but he is determined. Andree recruits engineer Knut Fraenkel and photographer Nils Strindberg and, in July 1897, riding on a wave of nationalist enthusiasm, they are off.
Unfortunately, the skeptics were right. The drag ropes that Andree had hoped to use to steer the balloon are lost immediately, leaving the balloon drifting freely in the wind. Worse, the balloon leaks hydrogen at an unsustainable rate. Just two days into their journey, and less than halfway to the North Pole, the balloon crashes. The three men are left stranded on the Arctic ice pack, facing a long, difficult journey on foot back to civilization.
Tropes:
- Artistic License – History: Overall, highly researched and accurate, but...
- In Real Life the party suffered a major setback when, while they were sheltering in an ice hut, the floe that they were on broke up underneath them, forcing them to flee to the nearby island. In the movie they simply vote to make camp on the island rather than stay on the ice.
- Andree carries poison, and says that he won't be left to "crawl" like the Jeannette expedition, where they were eating each other before the end. There was no evidence of cannibalism on the Jeanette expedition, although they did starve to death in the Siberian far north. Andree may be thinking of the Franklin expedition, where they did eat each other before the last of Franklin's sailors died from starvation and scurvy.
- At the Opera Tonight: Nils asks his girlfriend Anna to marry him at an opera performance.
- Bears Are Bad News: Fraenkel is mauled to death by a polar bear.
- Call-Back: At one point on the trek back the others get a look at the fancy scarf and white gloves that Fraenkel had packed for a possible audience with the Tsar of Russia. When Fraenkel dies, mauled by a polar bear, Andree lays him out with his scarf and gloves.
- Cassandra Truth: Dr. Ekholm, who was supposed to go on the 1896 expedition that was postponed due to lack of a favorable wind, points out the dangers that Andree is blithely ignoring. The drag ropes don't work very well in steering the balloon and, worse, the balloon leaks too much and won't be able to retain enough hydrogen to get the crew over the pole and to land in Russia or Canada. Andree ignores him.
- Celibate Hero: Andree resists getting a girlfriend to avoid distractions from his career. He gets one anyway, in the person of a woman named Gurli. As they're canoodling on a couch Andree sits up and says "It's dangerous for us to sit like this."
- Desert Skull: It's a whole skeleton and it isn't a desert. But the bleached bones of someone who died on Danes Island, the place where the expedition is launching, are a reminder of the unforgiving nature of the Arctic.
- Downer Ending: All three members of the expedition die (we don't see Andree die, but the pictures of corpses at the beginning, from when the remains of the expedition were found in 1930, leave no doubt as to his fate).
- Emergency Cargo Dump: When the Eagle is launched, she's too heavy and ends up in the water, forcing the crew to throw out some ballast to get her to lift. Later the Eagle loses altitude (by gas leaking and being weighted down by water condensating on the balloon), forcing her crew to once again shed weight by throwing away stuff, including the buoy with the Swedish flag that was going to be used at the North Pole.
- Fight to Survive: The three men find themselves stranded in the Arctic, facing a long and difficult journey on foot to make it back. They don't.
- Flashback: As things grow steadily more difficult during the march across the ice, all three members of the expedition have flashbacks to happier times back home in Sweden with loved ones, or in the case of Fraenkel, cavorting with Parisian can-can dancers.
- Foregone Conclusion: Anyone with a passing knowledge of the expedition knows that it ended with the death of all three expedition members. To really hammer the point home, the first shots of the movie is pictures of the remains of the real expedition members.
- Foreshadowing: At one point Fraenkel stumbles across a mirror stuffed in their boxes of provisions, and idly fogs the mirror with his breath; the three men are all boggled by how haggard they look. At the end a desperate Andree checks to see if Fraenkel is dead by holding the mirror to his face (he's dead).
- Instant Messenger Pigeon: Andree brought a bunch of pigeons to send messages back home. He only sends one before the balloon crashes and he lets the rest loose.
- Lecture as Exposition: Dr. Ekholm gives a skeptical speech and Andree gives a rah-rah speech to a group of investors, the two of which outline most of the necessary details of what Andree is trying to accomplish and the risks he's running.
- Left Hanging: The film ends with Andree alone on the island, after the deaths of his comrades, staring out to sea. This is a nod to how in Real Life, historians still don't really know what killed the men, who died barely three months after they set out, at a point when they still had food and scurvy hadn't yet set in.note
- Match Cut: As Strindberg falls down and dies on the ice, apparently of a heart attack, his crumpling to the ground is matched with a flashback shot of his girlfriend Anna diving into a lake.
- A Minor Kidroduction: A short and symbolic opening has Andree as a child, freeing a bird that got caught in a net.
- The Rival: Fridtjof Nansen, the Norwegian explorer who set a "Farthest North" record of 86 degrees latitude in 1896, the same year that Andree did not even launch due to unfavorable winds. Jealousies between Sweden and Norway and Andree's personal envy of Nansen are factors in his decision to launch.
- River of Insanity: The expedition to reach the North Pole by balloon. At the end of the film Andree admits that he knew that the expedition was doomed to fail from the very beginning, however pressure from the media and the Swedish public meant that he was forced to launch the balloon anyway.
- Snow Means Death: The snow, ice, and cold of the Arctic crashes the balloon and results in the deaths of all three explorers.
- Training Montage: A short sequence has Andree and his crew exercising with oddball 1890s weightlifting equipment.
- Two-Act Structure: The first act is preparation and flight. The balloon crashes exactly halfway through the movie, and the second act is the harrowing and ultimately doomed trek on foot.
- Voiceover Letter: There are voiceovers of Andree's expedition journal, Nils's journal addressed to Anna, and Anna's letter to Nils, which Andree took with him and gave to Nils on the latter's 25th birthday.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: The continual jostling as the balloon's car bumps and scrapes on the ice makes Frænkel vomit from motion sickness.
- Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: Andree's companions laugh about how his full name is actually "Salomon August Knut Hjalmar Ferdinand Andrée".
