Film: Into Eternity
Release date: 17th January 2011
Certificate: E
Running time: 75 mins
Director: Michael Madsen
Starring: Timo Äikäs, Carl Reinhold Bråkenhjelm, Mikael Jensen, Berit Lundqvist, Wendla Paile
Genre: Documentary
Studio: Dogwoof
Format: DVD
Country: Denmark/Finland/Sweden/Italy
This is an English-language release.
The human race’s dabblings with nuclear power have been producing a hazardous by-product which for decades we’ve all been blissfully sweeping under the carpet. It’s time to start facing up to the problem that sadly, nuclear waste will not go away - not for a long, long time. With his new film, Into Eternity, Michael Madsen (not he of Reservoir Dogs fame, but a Danish filmmaker and conceptual artist), examines the world’s first permanent solution currently under construction beneath the surface of Finland.
The current answer to dealing with the nuclear waste problem is to store it in vast tanks of water which, to some extent, control the radioactivity, but this is a temporary solution which will only be effective for only ten years or so. In Finland, 500 metres below the surface, engineers are building a vast underground tomb where the waste can be buried, and – independent of human maintenance – sealed away until it becomes safe.
Scientists predict that by the known rate of radioactive depletion, that will take 100,000 years - it is an incomprehensible legacy we have bequeathed to the world. This underground tomb is named Onkalo, which is Finnish for ‘hiding place’.
Through Into Eternity, Michael Madsen directly addresses the future inhabitants of our planet, some 100,000 years into the future, explaining the circumstances under which this deadly package has come to be there, warning of the terrible dangers that lurk beneath the Finnish soil, and to never, ever, disturb what lies there…
Into Eternity is a documentary, and an environmental documentary at that. It may not sound like the most enthralling topic for a ninety-minute feature, but somehow, Madsen has made a monster movie of it. Through his direction, the toxic waste becomes a beast, lurking unseen below the earth waiting to be disturbed, and absolutely deadly. We feel its presence constantly throughout the film, and in this Into Eternity is a film about fear. Madsen’s final scene is a brilliant homage to King Kong, as the monster is unchained, un-caged, and through wreaths of ethereal smoke we are invited to finally face it.
The photography is truly breathtaking. Through Madsen’s lens, the strange rocky underground lair becomes lunar and terrifying, and the smooth lines of the machinery and vast water pods become alien and threatening. Madsen has sited Ridley Scott’s Alien as an influence, and it is apparent in Into Eternity’s treatment of space, and the slow beauty of the eerie and somewhat menacing machinery.
It is to Madsen’s great credit that a film which could so easily have been ninety-minutes of finger wagging and self-righteous moralising is instead all about asking questions, and focuses his efforts on probing areas of uncertainty in the official theories. The conceit of directly addressing the future inhabitants of the planet is devilishly effective. It drives home the point that this issue is not a theoretical threat. It is a done deal. We have, as a species, already scarred our planet for longer than we can imagine, and the situation is worsening daily.
The scientific experts are articulate and clear throughout, and Madsen never allows the film to become bogged down in arguing technicalities. Often the most fascinating topics of discussion involve postulating on who or what the far distant inhabitants of our planet may be, and how on earth we go about communicating to them the nature of the terrible horror we have left them. Will they read? Will they understand abstract symbols of danger such as fields of thorns or Edvard Munch’s The Scream (two genuine suggestions for possible markers). These are huge philosophical areas of debate, and Madsen handles them with the sensitivity they deserve.
What is most impressive about Into Eternity is its sense of purpose. Madsen has been either startlingly clear-minded about what he shoots, or else brutal in the cutting room, to have produced such a single-minded piece with so little filler. Here is a film that knows absolutely what it wants to say, and does so with ingenuity, originality and style.
Artistically nourishing, morally aware, and clear without ever becoming patronising, Madsen delivers his essay with remarkable confidence and clarity of presentation. Honest, beautiful and terrifying, Into Eternity is an outstanding achievement - and an absolute must see. LOZ
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