If you saw a festival of B.C.-raised director Sturla Gunnarsson\u2019s three decades\u2019 worth of films, you could be forgiven for thinking each was made by a different director.
\nSturla Gunnarsson<\/p>\n
His more than 40 titles start with the Oscar-nominated 1981 documentary After the Axe, and continue with stops at literary adaptation (1998\u2019s India-set Such a Long Journey), true crime (2000\u2019s Scorn, about a B.C. teen\u2019s murder conspiracy) romantic comedy (2001\u2019s Rare Birds, with William Hurt and Molly Parker), and gritty, mythic adventure (2005\u2019s Beowulf and Grendel, starring Gerard Butler).<\/p>\n
Also countless TV episodes (everything from The Firm to Degrassi) and more documentaries.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a working director,\u201d said Gunnarsson during a break on one of those TV jobs, directing three episodes of the Vancouver TV mystery Motive.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like to be on the floor with the actors, to be creating something. For me, the thought of going two or three years between directing jobs, I would go absolutely out of my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
These days he makes his home in Toronto between film-related world travels. His latest, the B-movie arctic adventure Ice Soldiers, opens in theatres Friday.<\/p>\n
One thread running through those titles is an impish sense of humour. When making Beowulf on Iceland\u2019s harsh landscape, Stellan Skarsgard, as the half-mad king, was to greet Butler\u2019s heroic title character with a long, scripted speech. But when the cameras rolled on the windswept outdoor set, Skarsgard simply said \u201cYou want a beer?\u201d and Butler replied with a drawn out \u201cOoohhh, yeah.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gunnarsson kept that version.<\/p>\n
And when Gunnarsson teamed with environmentalist David Suzuki for 2010 biographical documentary Force of Nature, the director cheekily reminded the environmentalist that Greenland was much warmer when Gunnarsson\u2019s ancestors settled there a thousand years ago than it is today.<\/p>\n
That sense of humour runs through Ice Soldiers. The movie is about a trio of genetically engineered super-soldiers from Russia, dropped into the Canadian arctic during the 1963 Cuban Missile Crisis, who are then frozen in the ice for 50 years until an oil exploration crew defrosts them in the present day. Mayhem ensues.<\/p>\n
Genetically engineered Russian soldiers?<\/p>\n
\u201cTry to say that with a straight face,\u201d Gunnarsson said with a chuckle.<\/p>\n
The Sony-produced movie stars Australian Dominic Purcell as a modern-day arctic researcher who has an unexpected connection to the leader of the defrosted soldiers (Gabriel Hogan). Also starring are Adam Beach as a local who comes to the researcher\u2019s aid, Vancouver\u2019s Camille Sullivan as an oil executive and genre icon Michael Ironside (Top Gun, Terminator Salvation) as a military officer.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the things about genre filmmaking is that there\u2019s an audience already there,\u201d Gunnarsson said. \u201cIf you talk about sci-fi, action-adventure . . . a film like this has to do certain things. They want what they expect, but they want to be surprised by how you do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gunnarsson puts a Nietzschean spin on his Terminator-style villains, opting not to rely too heavily on special effects. \u201cThey\u2019re going to be strong and fast, sure, but it\u2019s not so much about their physicality, They act out of pure will. They have no conscience, they simply take what they want and enjoy it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He gives his players action-oriented scenes involving frozen rivers and much fighting in snowy landscapes as the pursuit of the super-soldiers goes from the arctic to a town on the treeline.<\/p>\n
The movie filmed a year ago in locations around wintry Sudbury, with the area\u2019s mining slagheaps standing in for the treeless arctic.<\/p>\n
Past films have taken Gunnarsson as far afield as Costa Rica and South Africa, and part of this movie\u2019s appeal was the straight-up adventure involved in filming it.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery day you\u2019re out in the elements, making a storm with a dozen big wind machines, or doing a chase with a Hummer on tracks and a snowmobile,\u201d he said. \u201cI haven\u2019t seen that chase before, those kinds of vehicles on that landscape. It was a big toybox.\u201d<\/p>\n
After he wrapped Ice Soldiers last February, Gunnarsson continued on an adventuresome 2013, heading to India to film a big-screen documentary titled Monsoon.<\/p>\n
\u201cI spent three months chasing rain in India,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He followed 12 individuals from all walks of life, who live throughout the subcontinent.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat they have in common is they have a crazy relative who shows up once a year and wrecks the house. That\u2019s the monsoon,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve been romanced by monsoons ever since I heard the word.\u201d<\/p>\n
He spent the past fall in Vancouver filming Motive, and will spend the first half of 2014 editing Monsoon for a fall festival release.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s his thread between Vancouver murder mysteries, Indian storms, and sci-fi soldiers?<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re all just different forms of exploration, how we make sense of the world we live in.\u201d