Beyond The Pole review

With the engaging catchphrase ‘Don’t be impotent! Be important!’, British suburbanites Brian (Rhys Thomas) and Mark (Stephen Mangan) prepare to launch the first ever ‘carbon neutral, organic, vegetarian’ expedition to the North Pole. Unsupported, of course. The aim is that ever tenuous liberal trope: to ‘raise awareness’ of global warming. But will they make a difference? Will they even survive?

With its shaky-cam aesthetic and to-camera narration, David L Williams’ Beyond the Pole is stylistically indebted to every mock-doc that has gone before. But there’s something hugely likeable about this warm hearted, if politically confused, indie that has buckets of charm, some excellent comic set-pieces and a true-life ‘making of’ tale that exemplifies the plucky British spirit that the film itself so effectively lampoons.

Best of all, though, is that Beyond the Pole is no specious, facetious British comedy. It is by turns a ferocious ‘j’accuse’ of the limits of liberal intervention and the myth of personal responsibility, underpinned by a surprisingly bitter current of darkness and despair.

Stephen Mangan is at his bug-eyed best as the psychotically naïve Mark, whose deep-seated personal issues come free-flowing to the surface in the vast open spaces of the arctic (the film was shot independently in Greenland). But it’s Rhys Thomas’ easy charisma that keeps the film together, even as Mark and Brian’s friendship cracks like the ice shelf beneath their feet.

“I wish I’d chosen something smaller – like turning down the thermostat,” says Brian. At times, Williams and his producing partner Helen Baxendale probably felt the same way. But they persevered, and the result is a distinct and distinctly unusual British comedy.