Journey to the Center of the Earth
Journey to the World of Dreams
My younger readers will forgive me, but it’s impossible to talk about “Journey to the Center of the Earth” (USA, 2008) without a good dose of nostalgia. Is that for my generation – and many others before – Jules Verne’s books, one of wich inspired the movie, were guarantee of good fun to all readers!
If we make a parallel, Verne would be equivalent to mixing Spielberg, George Lucas and JK Rowling together in one head – and long before the cinema exist. Living in France in the second half of the 19th century, a time of teeming scientific and cultural progress, Verne stood out for writing a series of extraordinary adventure books, full of refined historical and geographical details, result of an exhaustive research in libraries.
Verne published more than 70 books, translated into 148 languages, the most well-known being “Around the World in 80 Days”, “The Mysterious Island”, “From Earth to the Moon”, “Five Weeks in a Balloon” and “Journey to the Center of Terra”, this one first published in 1863. The story became a movie in 1959, starring James Mason, Pat Boone and Arlene Dahl. Although all the characters in the book were male, a woman was introduced to the film – after all, it was Hollywood and a romantic approach was required.
The book not only inspired 2008’movie, but also became a character in it. Trevor Anderson (Brendan Fraser) is a scientist who studies the movements of tectonic plates, being ignored by university students where he teaches and despised by the scientific community. Trevor resents the disappearance of his brother Max (Jean Michel Paré), also a scientist who had mysteriously disappeared during a field research in Iceland.
On the same day that he is informed that his brother’s laboratory would be closed, he receives a visit from his nephew, Sean (Josh Hutcherson), whom he will need to take care of for ten days, while his sister-in-law settles in Canada. With the boy, Trevor receives a box with objects from his brother, including a copy of the book “Journey to the Center of the Earth”, by Jules Verne, full of notes.
When studying these notes, Trevor discovers that a seismic anomaly in Iceland is similar to geological conditions as ten years ago, when Max disappeared. Deciding to find out more about his brother’s disappearance, Trevor embarks to Iceland with his nephew, since he also wanted to know more about his father.
When they arrive in Iceland and look for a scientist whose name Max had written in the book, they discover that he had died. Like Max, this scientist was also a big fan of Verne’s work. The scientist’s daughter, Hannah (Anita Briem) offers to guide them to where the geological probe left by Max was.
The trip, which had to be done on foot, leads the trio to a mountain where the artifact was. However, a lightning storm locks them in a cave, and they are forced to go deeper and deeper into the mountain, looking for a way out.
From there, each step takes them to a dangerous situation, where they discover themselves following the same paths of Max and perhaps by the character imagined by Verne, the explorer Arne Saknussen. After many adventures, the trio arrives at a gallery of colossal dimensions that contained an ocean, islands, clouds, and even light, generated by an electrical phenomenon.
To their great surprise, they discover also that in this parallel world there was life, none other than prehistoric beings , that had been extinct on the Earth’s surface millions of years before.
To return to their world, the explorers will have to face dinosaurs, walk on floating rocks, navigate an ocean infested with flying fish, and climb an active volcano! Will they achieve your intent? Sure, this is Hollywood, but the fun thing is to see how each knot gets untied …
“Journey to the Center of the Earth” received some criticism for having been produced to 3D exhibition, which became a problem at the time of launch in Brazil, when there were only nine rooms available. But the criticism was unfair, as the movie works perfectly in a traditional room or modern TV sets.
It is easy to see the influence of other action films. The cart race at the abandoned mine brings to mind a similar scene of “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” (USA, 1984). There are numerous references honoring the 1959 movie, and of course the own original Verne’s book.
The film is made for all ages. Despite the romantic atmosphere between Fraser and Anita Briem, the film is as chaste as the previous version. The best thing is the rhythm of adventure, which pleases both adults and children. A more valuable review than the one you just read was that from of a boy about eight years old, when asked by his father if he liked the film. “I did not understand anything – he said – but I loved it!”. And for those who always ask where to find this movie, it is available on the Netflix platform.