The Adventures of the Dodo
2015 · 55 min · Trad, Big Wall, Alpine, Documentary · Xpedition Films
Four years after Vertical Sailing Greenland, Captain Reverend Bob Shepton, then 79, calls the same crew back aboard the Dodo's Delight, a ten meter sailboat. Sean Villanueva O'Driscoll, Benjamin Ditto, and Olivier and Nicolas Favresse point the boat north again in search of unclimbed big walls, working through arctic ice, polar bears and storms before finding virgin granite in Greenland and then on Baffin Island. The sequel is bigger and stranger than the original. The walls are unmapped, the approach is a small boat in bad water, and the crew's answer to every delay is to pick up an instrument. If you like your expedition films unglamorous, funny, and genuinely uncertain about whether anything will get climbed, this is the register they work in.
Review
The sequel is bigger and stranger than the original, and I think it is the better film. Four years after Vertical Sailing Greenland, Bob Shepton, then 79, calls the same crew back aboard the Dodo's Delight, a ten-meter sailboat. Sean Villanueva O'Driscoll, Ben Ditto and Nicolas and Olivier Favresse point it north through arctic ice, polar bears and storms, and find virgin granite in Greenland and then on Baffin Island.
This is for people who like expedition films unglamorous, funny and genuinely uncertain about whether anything will get climbed. The crew's answer to every delay is to pick up an instrument, and the film knows that is both a joke and a survival strategy. Skip it if you have not seen the first film. This one assumes you know the boat, the captain and the formula.
What works is the water. A small boat in bad Arctic water is a more frightening setting than any wall, and the film treats the sailing as the real risk. Shepton at 79 is the best character on the site. What it leaves out is the climbing detail, again. The walls are unmapped and the film keeps them that way.
Vertical Sailing Greenland is the origin, and you need it. But if you can only watch one, this is the one with the polar bears, the storms and the captain at his most unbothered.
