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Ottway’s own concern is more practical: He collects the wallets of the victims, hoping to bring them to civilization for their families. In the absence of religious ritual, the wallets become almost a sort of sacred trust; with their pictures of loved ones and the memories they represent, they are all that is left of the victims’ identities.
The circumstances are dire. Perhaps too dire. The wolves are not only extraordinarily large and powerful and ferocious, but uncannily cunning as well. In one sequence the remaining humans go to astonishing lengths to move on from the wolves’ territory—but as soon as one of them missteps, the wolves are right there to pick him off.
For the record, a review of the film at the International Wolf Center blog calls The Grey a “monster movie,” adding that it’s about “as accurate a portrayal of wolf behavior as King Kong was about gorillas.”
In real life, wolves are almost always timid around humans. Wolf attacks on humans are rare, and almost always on children or, more rarely, women. Wolves that do attack humans are nearly always habituated to humans in proximity to human dwellings or else rabid.
The idea of a wolf pack deep in the wild harrying a group of several able-bodied men and picking them off one by one is unrealistic, though the movie’s biggest gaffe is the conceit of “the den” as a sort of established home base for the entire pack, littered with the carcasses of past kills. In reality, a den is a temporary home for birthing mothers in the spring. There are also serious questions, as I’ve noted before, about the whole “alpha/omega” social theory of wolves.
Can we accept those conceits for the sake of the movie? After all, King Kong is generally considered a pretty good flick. Well, yes and no. King Kong is overtly escapist fantasy, while The Grey seeks to be a grimly realistic survival movie. I appreciate that unlike last winter’s nihilistic tale of attrition, the execrable Sanctum, The Grey doesn’t cheapen life and death, and shows some interest in the big questions. But stacking the deck too improbably against the survivors is as damaging to suspension of disbelief as benevolent coincidences ushering a happy ending.
The film’s last word belongs to Ottway’s father, who wrote a scrap of fatalistic, defiant verse that provides Ottway with the closest thing to a credo he has:
Once more into the fray
Into the last good fight I’ll ever know
To live and die on this day…
Live and die on this day…
It’s a limited perspective for a movie that shows some interest in the bigger picture.
It is possible to discern a ray of grace in the darkness that surrounds Ottway. Like the real world, the world of The Grey doesn’t oblige us either to acknowledge God or to deny Him. If we choose, we can hear His voice speaking a word of reassurance. If we don’t, the movie doesn’t press the point. In the end, though, it’s on this world that The Grey has its eyes.
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Thanks for the review, Steven! I think I’ll wait for the blu-ray version.
unfortunately i saw this movie this week. I was not impressed. The CGI and puppeted wolves were kinda fake looking (though the size is pretty accurate for far northern species.) I too was annoyed by the wolves relentless pursuit of the men. Animals would be bedded down in a blizzard yet these monsters stalked within a few yards. Though I do enjoy being startled out of my seat by surprise attacks, I found the attacks overly gruesome. I wish you would have posted this review before I wasted my money. I left the theater grossed out and dejected. Oh how I longed for some redeeming moment- like a helicopter fly-over when Ottway yells for a sign, of course that may have been too trite for many in the audience. I couldn’t recommend this movie to anyone.
Kari, I’m sorry my review wasn’t in time to help you!
I liked it enough. Jaws was not realistic portrayal of shark behavior and wolves have long been a suitable bad guy (even though highly fictionalized.)It had a certain Jack London feel to it, but unlike London’s characters these had moments where they were able to accept their deaths.
Potzy: The thing is, though, that Jaws, though tense and terrifying, was also escapist fun, with likable and enjoyable characters, lots of humor, an underdog hero with whom we can identify, and — crucially — a satisfying, cathartic victory over the shark in the end. Had it been a relentlessly downbeat film that ended the way The Grey ends … well, it’s possible to make a great movie that way, but whatever else you could say about such a film, it wouldn’t be Jaws.
Steven,
I saw the film with my brother over the weekend and we both came out asking, “What was the point?”
It was a film absent of grace, of hope, of God. It’s a nihilistic portrayal of a group of men getting picked off, one-by-one, by nature or wolves. I cannot and would not recommend the film to anyone.
As you pointed out, the scene of Ottway comforting the dying man in the plane is probably the best scene in the film. That loved ones greet some of those who die, perhaps offers some very slight glimmer of hope, but it was as if the filmmaker was afraid to go down that road very far.
What are we to take of Ottway’s wife’s words to him, and the truth that is revealed about her at the film’s end? I kept wondering if there was something deeper to the film that I had missed, but I don’t think so.
I was seriously disappointed by the film and its ending.
Thanks for your thoughtful comments, Tim.
I definitely sympathize with your take on the film. FWIW, some Christian cinephiles are responding very positively to it (e.g., Christianity Today, Still Searching). Frank Grillo (of Warrior), who plays the ex-con, is a Christian, and he offers his thoughts on the film here.
My take is somewhere in between. If God is absent, or seems absent, the absence of God (or His felt absence, His silence, imperceptibility, etc.) is an important note in religious art from Ecclesiastes to Vatican film list honoree The Seventh Seal. The Grey takes the idea of God seriously; it expresses something of the fact that men are naturally religious, that we want to believe, want to hope in God. Even Ottway says he wishes he could believe, and calls out to God when the chips are down. That says something about who we are as a species, and perhaps by extension about the world we live in.
Does God answer Ottway’s cries? I think it’s possible that He does. (Spoiler warning.) I think it’s possible that God is telling Ottway not to be afraid of death. Not in the way Ottway hopes for, by some external sign or miracle, but internally, in the memory he keeps returning to of his dying wife, who says those words to him over and over. I think that is how God often works, invisibly, imperceptibly, in our hearts. And you’re right to point to the loved ones meeting others of the dying.
FWIW, I’m not sure I would call The Grey entirely bereft of God, grace and hope (I would call Sanctum that). But I agree with you that ultimately the film is too bound to its ruthless credo to allow much grace.
Did you stay through the credits for the final image? Some people feel it’s important, although I don’t think it changes anything myself.
There’s a good way to sum up this movie, and you don’t need to see it to say so, though I did: It’s a film made for December but released in February.
I thought the sparseness of the credit sequence, these days where most movies have engaging sheen at least for the director, spoke to this hypothesis.
**MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD**
My wife, a veterinarian who has always had a fondness for wolves, found the pack’s behavior not-too-terribly implausible in the hindsight of the film’s final revelation.
But of course, the wolf pack would aggressively defend themselves from a pack that seems determined, at great risk and even at great loss, to invade their innermost sanctum (if you’ll pardon the phrase).
In a couple places early on, the film is quite clear about the parallels between the wolfpack and the human pack, from the seven torchbearing survivors staring down seven pairs of glowing eyes, to the almost simultaneous challenges to each pack’s “alpha.”
Are the special effects groundbreaking or uncanny? No, but I for one wasn’t taken out of the movie by them. They were serviceable enough.
Is its depection of wolves strictly realistic? Maybe not, but they weren’t so far from the realm of what’s credible that my wife was jolted out of the movie. Some naturally balk at any depiction of animals that could be considered too negative, but it was all in the service of the story—and nature can indeed be red in tooth and claw.
I for one am glad that the story wasn’t clear-cut in being bleakly nihilistic or having a cheap happy ending. From the last shot after the credits—and from the set-up of the final scene as a mano e mano (of sorts)—it appears that the wolfpack’s alpha challenged the human pack’s alpha, that both survived, and that the former accepted the latter.
And then what? Ottway becomes Tarzan of the tundra, or he survives long enough to find the loggers who left the barest trace of evidence?
The film ends on a thought-provoking note that keeps me coming back and pondering. That wasn’t a bad thing with Inception, and it’s not a bad thing here.
Steven, I can’t believe how much time you encourage people to waste on film after film, when there’s a much better use of our time than on this addicting so-called “entertainment.”
I looked at this only because a link sent me to Fr. Pacwa’s post today on NCR. But EWTN could do better with the NCRegister than to promote movie after movie after movie through this blog. This will be my last time at NCRegister’s website. Fr. Pacwa’s article can be found elsewhere.
“No Movies Please, We’re Catholic”
I have read that while wolves on this side of the hemisphere do not in general attack people, the Russian version is not so kind and these wolves are well known for their people-stalking. Just thought that I might throw that bit of useless trivia in the mix.
Seems like the movie is not about wolf behaviour, so concerns of that sort would be misplaced. Maybe more of a modern version of ‘To Build a Fire’. Seems like it is the writer and director trying to make a movie about the various aspects of the spirit of man. If it falls short it is to the embarrassment of the film makers and their lack of preparation. I felt this way slogging through the adolescent philosophy in ‘The Matrix’ series. It’s just pretentious justification for a ripping yarn and they should just admit it.
live and die on this day. the best film in 2012 with best director and best actors.Liam nesson we excpect more from you.thank you
bestfilmof2012.withbestdirectorandactors.liveanddieonthisday.thankyou
Very unrealistic movie that shows what not to do in such a situation…as what to do.
A) NEVER LEAVE YOUR BROKEN PLANE/CAR. It will be 1,000x more easy to spot than you.
B) Humans can travel maybe a few miles per DAY in such terrain…such travel would absolutely exhaust you…it’s a death sentence.
C) Wolves simply are not that brave or intelligent. Don’t give me the “desperate” for food bit…there were dead bodies EVERYWHERE. Bodies that could not fight back. Are wolves smart or incredibly stupid? Pick one.
D) If you go into a river in Alaska in the winter…and have no warm change of clothes? You will die within minutes. Period.
Did you write the movie? Critic? You can only critisize a movie you didnt write.. I thought it was cool! So back off people
Great movie, Liam great job
Liam Neeson played Kinsey. He’s made sub-par movies before.
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