This marked the first of several films that I have watched during the Japanese Film Festival held in the GSC Cinemas (Msia) in Sept 2013. It contained an interesting concept - basically pertaining to survival skills employed by modern day professionals under extreme working conditions.
It is something everyone can relate to at some point in our professional or student life. Postings to places far from our home, or working 24/7 for a demanding project. Effects conjured out as a result of leaving our comfort zones, like homesickness, feeling out of touch with family members' or loved ones whereabouts, urban lifestyle etc...but in this case, the saving grace is that the 'trapped' scientists had the luxury of a chef to provide the best of the most important necessities of all, which is home made food.
It is rather amazing how sophisticated dishes can be made under lack of variety of food choices, and the low water boiling point. But another sweet side of the movie is that it quite diversely covered the fun activities that are likely to happen to fill in the boredom. There were the unpleasant side of the activities too, for instance during long distance phone calls which were better not made in the first place, or one particular favourite scene where a member threw tantrum as a particular food supply ran out.
The only couple of things I can name that the movie did not cover at all were the doctor's chores, it was like none of the members had any health problems throughout the over 400-day stint.some of the characters were severely underdeveloped, I didn't get to know their background or why they chose to participate in the expedition at all.
Overall this is easily a heartwarming movie but given its time length I felt more allocation to character development could be done to substitute for some of the food scenes. A 6.5/10 movie to me.
