ADVENTURE; 1hr 53min
STARRING: Pål Sverre Hagen, Anders Baasmo Christiansen, Jakob Oftebro, Tobias Santelmann, Odd-Magnus Williamson, Gustaf Skarsgård
Close quarters: Hagen
Long of wind but huge of heart, Kon-Tiki is the whopping story of fixated Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl (Hagen) and his crazy-beautiful 1947 journey of 4,300 nautical miles from Peru to Polynesia on a balsa-wood raft with just five madcap crewmen and a parrot for company.
Why, you might well ask? With his condescending colleagues pooh-poohing Heyerdahl’s contention that Polynesia had been populated from South America and not from Asia, as was generally believed, the strapping go-getter — and non-swimmer — decides to prove it the very hard way by making the trip himself.
The Pacific’s moods are bewitching and terrible, testing the mettle of everyone onboard over 101 punishing days. As an exercise in endurance, the triumphant, probability-busting voyage is right up there with a marathon stroll over hot coals. That the majority of today’s anthropologists don’t subscribe to Heyerdahl’s theory is a poignant postscript to a collective leap of faith that was so much bigger than the defiant sum of its parts.
