180° South: Conquerors of the Useless Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.5

180° South: Conquerors of the Useless Blu-ray Movie Review

Sometimes progress is turning around and taking a step in the opposite direction.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater June 4, 2010

In my time at blu-ray.com, I’ve reviewed a handful of conservation-minded documentaries, and most of them have one thing in common—they want to shock, scare, or otherwise pummel the environmental apathy right out of you. And fair enough, I think most of us would agree that there’s a lot more that we could be doing to keep our planet verdant and healthy, but this guilt-trip approach can be tiring. After watching Yann Arthus-Bertrand's Home, for instance, I was struck by the visual beauty of the aerial footage, but the tone of the narration—pointed, accusatory, bleak—left me feeling not energized for change, but despondent and powerless to do anything. A more effective method, I’ve always thought, would be to simply celebrate nature, to focus on why it’s worth saving, and not so astringently on how we’ve already hurt it. Travel documentary 180° South sets its course on this positive bearing, and though it reaches no new conclusions—its epiphanies are all of the “well, yeah, no kidding” variety—the journey is well worth taking.

The jagged peak of Mt. Corcovado...

First, a bit of background: In 1968, pioneer alpinists, itinerant surfers, and self-described “dirt bags” Yvon Chouinard and Doug Tomkins set out for six months in a run-down van, tracing the coastline from California to Chile, and stopping along the way to ride waves and climb previously unsurmounted mountains. This was during the height of hippy freedom, when middle class kids with a few bucks in their pockets could buy a $15 Volkswagon and bum around the country, Kerouac-style, living the semi-squalid dream. The two nomads didn’t know it yet, but their 5,000- mile trip would be life-altering. The son of a French-Canadian blacksmith, the then-nearly penniless Chouinard forged and hand-hammered his own pitons to (literally) support his climbing habit. Two years later, he would start the Patagonia clothing company, which has since made him a very wealthy man. (Thrifty hikers often refer to the high-end brand as “Pradagonia” or “Patagucci.” So much for dirt bag.) Still, Chouinard has used his money and industry influence for good, ushering in the era of “clean climbing” and steadily funding environmental activism. And Tompkins, who founded both The North Face and ESPRIT, has since devoted his life and resources to buying up huge tracts of land in Chilean Patagonia and turning them into governmentally preserved areas. In 1968, however, they were just a couple of nature-loving drifters, keen on climbing and surfing. They brought a few 16mm cameras along to document their journey, and turned the footage into the film Mountain of Storms, an early entry in the “extreme sports” genre.

Some forty years later, blue-collar Californian everyman Jeff Johnson—an inveterate outdoorsman who idolizes Choinard and Tomkins—found the footage and was inspired to retrace their epic adventure. 180° South follows Johnson as he makes his way from Mexico to Chile, surfing, scaling sheer rock faces, and serving up plenty of Dear Diary-style narration. The film’s tagline reads, “It’s Not An Adventure Until Something Goes Wrong,” and it doesn’t take long for that something to happen. Johnson joins the crew of a small sailboat heading for Chile, but when the mast splits in half like a toothpick, they’re forced to motor to Easter Island for repairs. I don’t doubt that the mast actually cracked, but this does come across as slightly staged, an attempt to inject some drama into the otherwise idyllic proceedings. While on Easter Island—a place that suffered its own environmental catastrophe after complete deforestation—Johnson meets a sexy surfer chick, Makohe, who decides to come along for the ride. (Once again, this seems a little too planned out.) When they finally get to Chile, they see firsthand how artisan fishermen are put out of work by commercial fishing fleets, and note the devastation caused by upstream dams and pulp mills. Eventually, they meet up with Johnson’s outdoorsman buddies, Keith Malloy and Timmy O’Neill, and—dream of dreams—get to crash at Doug Tompkin’s farmhouse. Chouinard is there too, and though he’s pushing 70 now, he joins the gang for an attempt to reach the summit of the ominous Mount Corcovado.

The journey of personal discovery for Johnson—he talks about being “drawn to open country…it’s where the world is most clear, where it makes the most sense”— is eventually eclipsed by the film’s environmental message, which is, essentially, that we have a duty to protect places that we love, and that to love a place, you have to go there and know it firsthand. (That’s the “well, yeah, no kidding” epiphany.) Johnson himself is really nothing more than a cipher in this story, and I think that’s intentional. He’s a stand-in for all of us work-saddled busybodies, and represents the idealistic wanderlust we all wish we could indulge in if it weren’t for bills and family and general responsibility. The idea here is for us to see the world through his eyes, and hopefully experience the same kind of awakening awareness to nature’s fragility and our impact on the environment. Couched in Johnson’s laid-back surfer’s voice, though, the narration is often over-earnest and all- too-obvious, as when he says, “It’s easy for us to blindly consume when we don’t see the effect that it has on other places.” Instead of dwelling on such shopworn generalities, I wish the film had focused more on the particulars of the journey—Johnson’s own mental state, his relationship with Makohe, or how stoked he must’ve been to meet his idols. Still, 180° South is a worthwhile adventure—there are certainly some spectacular sights to see—and though it tries much too hard to convey its rather banal message, it’s at least genuinely good-spirited about it. Instead of feeling depressed about the state of the Earth, I came away from 180° South wanting to book a trip to Patagonia.

180° South: Conquerors of the Useless Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

180° South treks onto Blu-ray with a 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer that does the epic beauty of the journey justice. Shot largely on high definition video, the documentary has a clean, crisp, and mostly noiseless look. While not the sharpest shot-on-video footage I've seen, clarity is generally strong, letting us make out individual grains of sand, the texture of craggy rock faces, and detail in the equally craggy faces of sun-weathered, wind-beaten gauchos. Color stays realistic throughout, and though things get a bit hazy and washed out-looking during some of the up-on-the-mountainside sequences, sky blues stay true, skin tones keep an even keel, and the sunsets are spectacular. Occasionally, common video faults show through—overexposed colors, too-hot whites, dark grayish blacks, slight banding in color gradients—but for the most part, the image looks great. The 16mm film footage from Yvon and Doug's original 1968 journey has been re-telecined in high definition as well, and it's just as impressive, with surprisingly rich colors and minimal print damage. For a fairly low budget documentary, 180° South is striking on Blu-ray.

180° South: Conquerors of the Useless Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

180° South features a fantastic indie-pop score, courtesy of Isaac Brock and James Mercer— respective frontmen of Modest Mouse and The Shins—with additional contributions by Andrew Bird and surf-folk impresario Mason Jennings. Reproduced here via a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track, the music sounds excellent, with a nice sense of differentiation between instruments and a dynamic range that has heft and clarity, from deep, defined bass lines to clean guitar chords dripping with reverb. The songs frequently fill up all channels, but the rest of the audio is largely located up front. You'll occasionally hear some outdoorsy ambience—falling rain, the rush of an incoming wave, etc.—but there's really no sustained attempt at immersion. And that's understandable, given that nearly all the audio was recorded on location out in the middle of nowhere. As a side effect, some of the dialogue sounds distant or slightly muffled, but I never had any trouble discerning what was being said. Optional English SDH subtitles are available in easy-to-read white lettering.

180° South: Conquerors of the Useless Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The Making of 180 Degrees South (SD, 23:49)
The disc includes a fantastic "making of" documentary that features interviews with all the key players in the film's production, who discuss the origins of the project and how they set about completing it.

Deleted Scenes (SD, 18:06)
There are five deleted scenes here, including two bonus surf sections, a conversation in a fish shack, a sequence in the ER after Makohe gets a nasty cut on her hip, and a fake yeti sighting (it's just Keith, with his massive beard).

The Music (SD, 37:35)
Crazily enough, the producers flew musicians Mason Jennings and James Mercer down to Patagonia so they could soak up the vibe of the place before embarking on a score. Here, we get to see them perform a few songs around the campfire, while Yvon Chouinard nods off. There are also brief sequences featuring Makohe singing traditional Easter Island songs, and some "making of the music" type featurettes. There are twelve sections here in all:

Mason Jennings "Your New Man"
James Mercer "Gone for Good"
Mason Jennings "Something About Your Love"
Chile Music - Part 1
Chile Music - Part 2
Chris Mallow Jump Cut - Filming the Score
Emmett Mallow Slideshow - Recording the Score
Keith Malloy
Making of 180 Degrees South Music
Makohe Sings - Rapa Nui
Makohe Sings - Interior
Mason Jennings "Something About Your Love"

A Look at 180 Degrees South (SD, 2:08)
This is like an extremely compressed version of the "making of" documentary.

Trailer (1080p, 2:22)

180° South: Conquerors of the Useless Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Environmental message films, with their scare tactics and finger pointing, are often more depressing than they are rousing. 180° South defies that expectation by being a genuinely joyful travelogue that leads us through some breathtaking and remote landscapes while espousing backpackers philosophy about life being a journey and the importance of protecting the environment. Not exactly original, no, but it never hurts to be reminded. Recommended for surfers, rock climbing roustabouts, and armchair travelers alike.