Freezer films

Feeling hot? Here’s some freezer films to cool you off.

The last part of Smilla’s Sense of Snow (1997) takes place in the area surrounding the earth’s most northern community, Siorapaluk, Greenland, a few-person settlement near Qaanaaq. Last week, Qaanaaq’s daytime temperature ranged between 37 and 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Nights were about the same because the sun doesn’t set in Qaanaaq from mid-April until late August when the sea thaws. Qaanaaq’s average February-March temperature is minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

Smilla, based on Peter Hoeg’s novel, is about a woman whose Inuit mother was killed by a walrus.

Smilla spent the first few years of her life in Greenland where she developed an unusual sense of snow. Her father is an American doctor who moved to Denmark where they both live at the movie’s beginning. Smilla’s icy expertise involves her in a murder mystery and she eventually returns to Greenland to solve it. Although the plot is pretty preposterous, the movie is well-made and features stunning scenes of Greenland.

I’ve always thought of Greenland and Iceland, only 180 miles apart, as being similar. They aren’t.

Iceland has a population density of more than seven people per square mile. Greenland, the largest island on earth, is 21 times bigger and, with just over 56,000 people, has almost 15 square miles (81 percent ice-capped) per person.

The last part of the 20th James Bond film Die Another Day (2002) was filmed in East Iceland’s beautiful Hofn area. Last week southern Iceland had daytime temperatures in the high 50s and lows not as cold as ours. The Gulf Stream keeps Iceland pretty warm in the winter, too, with an average January temperature of 35 degrees.

Die has spectacular scenes of an ice hotel. The only real ice hotels I know about are in Fairbanks, Quebec City, and the original and most famous one in Jukkasjarvi, a small village in Swedish Lapland. According to the latter’s online ad, it sleeps 100 people, has an ice exhibit, a movie theater, and an Absolut (Swedish vodka brand) ice bar.

The James Bond hotel seems similar but has additional amenities, including a vast greenhouse and a solar mirror to catch all that Northern sun (and destroy the earth with a laser beam).

The Snow Walker (2003) is a less well-known Canadian film. Based on a short story by Farley Mowat, the movie is set partly in 1953 Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories. January days in Yellowknife average minus 10 Fahrenheit. and the nights dip to below minus 30. It is Canada’s coldest place year-round and has the country’s longest snow season and the most deep-cover snow days...

Unlike Greenland, which has no roads between settlements, you can drive to Yellowknife, if you don’t mind miles and miles of gravel.

Most of Snow, the story of a wrecked airplane’s pilot and a dying Inuit girl, was shot around Churchill, Manitoba. Last week Churchill enjoyed a balmy 71 degrees one day with low 50s at night. Its average high in January is minus 9 with a low of minus 24. You can see the Northern Lights 300 days a year.

Snow lasts from October to April and you can’t drive there. At all. You can take a train.

The last freezer film is Fargo (1996), a perfect film shot in North Dakota and Minnesota.

Fargo starts out by saying that it’s based on a true story. It isn’t. It’s a weird, sometimes violent, often really funny tour de force about a Minneapolis car salesman having his wife kidnapped and Brainerd’s pregnant police chief solving the resulting murders.

They do all this in piles of snow.

Last week, Brainerd’s daytime temps rivaled ours and the nights dropped only into the 60s. The average January high is 19 and the low minus 7.

Not too bad and you can drive there.

The people are really cheerful in Brainerd. They may be in Yellowknife also. It has more social groups per capita than anywhere in Canada. Smilla is not a smiley person but she was forced to move to Denmark when young. She seemed happy as a child in Greenland. Iceland has one of the world’s highest life expectancies, 80 for women and 74 for men.

As I sweat in my non-air-conditioned house, I think I’d be happier in a cold place.