Eight Below

Rating:	★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Action & Adventure

"Eight Below"
Paul Walker, Jason Biggs, Bruce Greenwood
Directed by Frank Marshall
Walt Disney Pictures
2006


Loyalty, friendship and love in time of hypothermia: this is the theme of Frank Marshall's latest action adventure drama, "Eight Below," which over a number of weekends has frozen hearts of varied audiences, striking a chord in the heart of any pet-loving human being.

Delineating much of the genre made famous by "Milo and Otis," "Homeward Bound," "Fly Away Home," and similar films that feature animals as protagonists, Paul Walker's starrer highlights much on the survival instincts and the sympathies created in the human protagonists. Paul Walker is Jerry Shepard, Jason Biggs is his best friend, Cooper; and Bruce Greenwood is a rugged American geologist, who are all forced to leave behind their team of beloved sled dogs due to a sudden accident and perilous weather conditions in Antarctica.

During the harsh, Antarctic winter, the dogs must struggle for survival alone in the intense frozen wilderness for over 6 months. This is from where the story propels, in the frozen inability of the master to fend for his dogs' safety, the animal characters would also intensify the storyline. After Shepard takes initiatives to save the dogs during the impending winter, he realizes he cannot do more than that.

After asking help from offices in the mainland States, Shepard makes clear to himself that the attempts to save the dog seem futile. Shepard's character articulates the human instinct to care for creatures lower than himself, say, animals.

In Marshall's film, the young master Shepard carries the entire emotional burden when after being injured in a snowstorm, he unintentionally leaves behind his eight sled dogs for the entire winter. The film showcases much of the human inability to counter the working of Mother Nature. If all else fails, as do Shepards attempts to save his dogs during the entire winter, man is predisposed to leave it all to fate, or luck.

Shepard, after having given up on the crusade to save his dogs, retreats into his camper home, trying hard to forget about the whole thing. The idea of man [and animal] versus nature spells the conflict in the film. The protagonists, both man and beast, cannot do anything much to alter their fates. Nature's wrath and indifference poses a challenge and even creates much problem for the master and his dog-friends who are also his co-workers in the Antarctica laboratory.

The dogs' sweet countenances and cute appearances, the cool and freezing atmospheres and settings in the northern wild are much endearing as they elicit sympathies of any person who can--to the very least--feel.

One significant realization is done by the American scientist in the character of Bruce Greenwood, who was saved by the same pack of dogs who are left to starve in the freezing wild. It is only after the scientist receives award for getting the meteoric rock that he realizes the importance of the animals to himself and not just to Shepard.

The film belongs to a genre that is not new in the industry. American writer Jack London?s hybrid canine protagonist Buck in his classic novel "Call of the Wild" has since moved hearts and encouraged the human spirit when he's portrayed as one who overcomes his own dilemma in the freezing wild of the North America's hinterlands.

Both the film and the novel in the limelight render traces of anthropomorphism--that style of placing human attributes in otherwise non-human characters. It is in making animals behave like human beings that human beings indeed realize their importance to them.

Ultimately, animal welfare associations the world over must have since debunked the idea of human superiority to animals, perhaps hinting at co-existence. For, in the bigger scheme of things, human beings will be nothing without the presence and essence of other living creatures like animals.

The film speaks much of the human sympathy or apathy in the ways the characters present themselves as either concerned or apathetic to the plight of the animals.

In the end, Paul Walker's Jerry Shepard makes clear to us that the ability to care for animals runs natural in the human instinct--because it is his inner need to love and be loved.