It's an odd story to tell anyway, since it is very much about a doomed nationalist project of the late 19th century. But I think the thing that sort of bugs me about it is that Troell doesn't really use his film to analyze how and why these men ended up dying in the middle of a frozen wasteland. Instead we watch their demise in a sort of detached way – not detached from the men's emotional journey but certainly detached from the context of that journey. Troell is interested in the men's experience. Fine! But, he indicts no one, really, except Andrée himself, as if the project was simply one of ego. This is unfortunate, to my mind, and it makes the film a kind of lone-man-against-the-elements movie instead of a real portrait of Sweden in 1897.
The takeoff of the balloon is totally awesome, but the movie (and, of course, the 1897 expedition) both go downhill from there.
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