Many of the best documentaries are based around incredible stories that few people know much about, and that’s certainly true here. The docudrama Erebus: Into The Unknown heads back to 1979, when an airplane taking 257 passengers on a sightseeing tour of Antarctica mysteriously crashed into the remote and frozen Mount Erebus.
In order to recover the victims, 11 New Zealand police officers none of whom had much experience with snow or survival situations were sent to Antarctica and onto Erebus, to deal with the horrific job of finding, cataloguing and recovering the now totally frozen bodies.
It’s an incredible story in its own right, not least the suggestion that Air New Zealand may have had more knowledge of what happened to the aircraft and why it crashed than they were telling the public. However what makes Erebus: Into The Unknown stand out is that rather than concentrating purely on the facts of the crash itself, it’s largely about the recovery team and what they went through.
As the men themselves suggest in their interviews, they were all but forgotten for years afterwards, and indeed as with many disasters, the input of those who go into these situations and desperately try to do their best for the families of victims is rarely remembered, no matter what they went through to do that. The film’s mix of interviews and dramatic reconstruction paints a vivid picture of what the men had to deal with on Antarctica, from recovering the bits of bodies that had disintegrated in the crash, to dealing with the torment’ from the constant screech of gulls who’d been drawn to the site due to those bodies.
It’s an extremely well-made and absorbing film, with its greatest strength being that it never forgets that it’s a story about human beings both those at the crash site and those who’d perished. There are certainly moments within the reconstructions where it briefly feels it might have gone too far with trying to push pathos and pull at the audience’s emotions, but it always ensures that these are backed up by what the men themselves say, so you know they really did happen and aren’t just there for dramatic effect.
Erebus is a fascinating and absorbing film that’s well worth seeking out. By focussing on the recovery team it manages to bring a real humanity to its story, giving a fascinating insight into both a particular terrible situation and the tremendous impact disaster recovery can have on those involved particularly if they are simply pulled from normal life and then thrust back into it afterwards, with little appreciation for what they’ve dealt with both mentally and physically.
Overall Verdict: On its own the horrific Mount Erebus air crash could have made for an interesting documentary, but taking us into the contribution of the disaster recovery team gives a fascinating insight into how the impact of a disaster doesn’t end with the event itself.
Reviewer: Tim Isaac