INFINITE STORM

Poland/UK, 2022, 97 minutes, Colour.

Naomi Watts, Billy Howell, Denis O'Hare.

Directed by Malgorzata Szumowska, Michel Englert.

This film about mountain search and rescue is based on the experiences of Pam Bales who also acted as adviser and co-producer. While the story is American, the film was directed by prominent Polish directors, Malgorzata Szumowska.

The film is very straightforward in its structure – which has led to many audiences complaining that it is boring. Perhaps there was the American expectation that all should be dangerous, menacing, violent. This is not the case – rather, especially with the last part, the film suggests audiences think about lives, life and death, accidents, saving others and the repercussions.

In fact, for the first 30 minutes, the audience is introduced to Pam, living alone, getting up to face the day, contact with the base, going up into the mountains for her search and rescue work, warned about a storm, facing the storm. Then she discovers a man sitting on the mountaintop. The next 30 minutes shows the rescue, his initial and continued reluctance, his seeming despair, Pam and all her efforts to keep him going, recovering from wounds and sprained ankle, his falling over cliffs, into rivers, the final successful bringing him down the mountain. And then he disappears.

The final 30 minutes focus on the aftermath, the disappearance of John (the name that Pam decides to use when he won’t reveal himself), her living alone and not seeking any publicity. The story reaches the media and a journalist comes to interview her. She is quite reluctant. A long time passes and she gets a message from John, goes to meet him in a diner and there is a sequence where he explains his past, his relationship, the disappearance of his girlfriend, why he was on the mountain, hoping to see her again or her making contact. During the film Pam has a number of flashbacks to playing with her teo young daughters – and, she finally recounts what happened to the daughters at herself.

The theme of the film is reaching out to others, self-giving, heroism, making contact, affecting other people’s lives with good consequences on our own.