The Chef of South Polar (2009)

Nankyoku Ryourinin or The Chef Of South Polar is an engaging take about the life of a group of scientists thrown in a faraway post in the Antarctic region.

The team of eight have different shores within their posts and they have to stay there for a little more than a year. Their story is mainly told by their easy-going appointed chef. Basically, the film shows bits and pieces of their everyday life and how they manage to survive in such a place. There’s water control, waiting for one’s role, lack of communication, shortage in certain ingredients and surely routine, cold and loneliness.

The characters in this film were very well shaped. Even though the chef was the main character. Every other group member got his exposure. There was an interesting balance between their behaviours and their natural eccentric personalities. You would see a bunch of grown man doing sports activities every morning, a tantrum thrown out of nowhere or several activities to shorten the time. All while helping each other and relying on one another through various situations.

The film’s strength was keeping the storyline very close home. It was humane and quite real. It’s how you would expect of a scientific team to act when they’re thrown in an isolated region. Their quirky humour and delightful situations were a great way to not make this film too melodramatic or overly sentimental.

Led by the versatile Sakai Masato, the acting department was very well illustrated. The cast delivered, as they should have. They were quite faithful to their characters.

It could be that the film got a little slow but it was that exact same building that made it quite delightful to follow. Plus, the funny situations made it a lot shorter than what it seems.

A little warning, try not to watch this on an empty stomach. It will be a complete torture with all the delicious dishes in the film. It’s impressive how a good chef can make a variety of food with little choice of ingredients.

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Dang, Japan strikes again with this one.

Wow…. Honestly, I didn’t expect myself to love this movie so much. I was actually interested in the drilling ice core topic that they’ve shown in the trailer, cause my university lecturer used to say that ice core could be used to calculate the oxygen level years ago, and I got a little bit too curious so I watched this movie.

And what I didn’t expect at all was—contrary to where the story of this movie took place: the cold, dry, and lonely Antarctica—this movie is amazingly very warm, in a sense that you will be surprised to find yourself smiling through the movie, because of how heartwarming it is. The Chef of South Polar depicts perfectly how it feels to suddenly work miles away from where your home and your family are, how it feels to spend a year with strangers, how it feels to slowly driven into madness because you are fed up with your job but deep down you were just feeling really homesick and… lonely.

This movie has its funny moments too (and madly funny at that!), we get to see how these Oji-san being chaoticly funny and endearing at the same time. But the focus of this movie is actually leaning more towards the chef in the team. I love how they told us about the background story of the chef, which showed us that he actually doesn’t wanna go to Antarctica, but he has to. And I also love how they make the chef very attentive and full of affection towards his cooking ingredients, the food, as well as the people he used to call as strangers. He did have his meltdowns too, like the others, and omg it did make my eyes water, haha.

What I really love tho, is the accurate depiction of feeling homesick and having meltdowns because of it. My friends from university who has to live far from their family to pursue education used to told me the same thing what these Oji-san were experiencing. Sometimes they just wanna be crazy and give up to their cravings, just like the characters in this movie. Plus, that scene where it shows midnight craving for noodles? Very accurate!

I kinda wanna see the background story of each characters though, they are all very unique and interesting (especially the glaciologist, but well this is just a personal and selfish request of mine, hehe). All in all, It’s so delightful to see them spend their work and time as a team and as a family, miles away from their hometown, working their way out to heal their lonely soul with warm foods from the chef ❤️.

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