‘Endurance’ Review: A Wildly Uneven, AI-Assisted Account of Two Antarctic Expeditions

In their latest film, Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi continue to pursue their fascination with the lengths to which a human body can be pushed, and the strength of spirit required to push it there. After following up their Oscar-winning documentary Free Solo with a dip into the untested waters of narrative filmmaking in Nyad, they’ve returned to the nonfiction realm to tell the dual story of Ernest Shackleton’s 1914 Antarctic expedition and the quest, over 100 years later, to locate the wreckage from the voyage. But while Endurance continues the thematic through line of Chin and Vasarhelyi’s previous films, and while some of the photography is as impressive as the stomach-churning cliffs of Free Solo, it never manages to delve into the deeper psychological layers that made that film so compelling.

Directed by Chin and Vasarhelyi along with Natalie Hewit, Endurance moves back and forth between the two voyages throughout its runtime. Shackleton’s 1914 journey, which was a bold attempt to make the first land crossing of the Antarctic continent, ultimately ended in disaster. The eponymous ship became trapped in the ice and ultimately had to be abandoned, leaving Shackleton and his crew stranded for over a year under punishing conditions.

Their story is told through an impressive collection of photographs, documents, and restored footage from the early movie camera brought aboard the Endurance by famed photographer and cinematographer Frank Hurley. It’s a pretty dizzying experience, to see and hear the firsthand accounts of these explorers from over a century ago, though the decision to use AI recreations of the crews’ voices when reading out their personal letters leaves a bad taste.

The 2022 Endurance22 expedition, led by marine archaeologist Mensun Bound and polar geographer Dr. John Shears, was undertaken to finally locate the watery resting place of Shackleton’s ship. Those aboard the S.A. Agulhas II are quick to emphasize the magnitude of their undertaking—the Endurance was perhaps the most famous wreckage still to be found at the time—as well as the difficulty. Because of the brutal cold and the swirling movement of the ice flow, they have only a very limited amount of time to search before they’ll be forced to abandon the project, otherwise their ship could meet the same fate as Shackleton’s. A ticking clock is even provided on screen, counting down the days until they’re forced to retreat.

In spite of these efforts, there’s no sense of drama to the modern-day portion of the film. A group of people sail out to try and find an old boat and then they find it. There’s nothing especially tense or urgent about their quest, and juxtaposing it with Shackleton’s perilous voyage only underlines that impression. The S.A. Agulhas II crew have their quirks—one of them even carries around a miniature bust of Shackleton wherever he goes—and they’re all clearly very invested in their work, but there’s no real personal narrative here to bring the story to life.

The details of Shackleton’s original journey are far more engrossing—a death-defying tale in which his crew of gentleman explorers seem to have met every new threat with an almost cartoonish degree of stiff-upper-lip stoicism. But the decision to continually cut away from them proves to be quite distancing, preventing us from really immersing ourselves in the danger and the drama of their situation. They’re famous for their ability to endure, after all, and yet rather than staying with them through their trials, we’re continually dragged away to check in on a bunch of warm, well-fed scientists peering at their on-board computer screens.

Endurance makes for an effective history lesson, recreating a famous voyage in incredible detail, but the film’s attempts to tell two stories at once ultimately see it damned by its own ambition. Which, in its own way, does make it the perfect tribute to Ernest Shackleton.