Erebus: Into the Unknown is a documentary film which premiered in 2015.
The topic is a tragic episode – a plane crash – which holds an important place in the modern history of New Zealand.
Here are some basic facts about this film:
** Original title: Operation Overdue
** Directed by Charlotte Purdy and Peter Burger
** Produced by Carmen J. Leonard
** Original musical score by Tom Healy
** Consultants: Caterina de Nave, Greg McGee and James Heyward
** Run time: 70 minutes
INTRODUCTION
On 28 November 1979, a DC-10 plane, Flight 901 from Air New Zealand, crashed on Mount Erebus, a volcano and one of the highest mountains in Antarctica.
All 257 persons on board (237 passengers and 20 crew) were killed in the crash. It was and remains one of the worst disasters in the history of New Zealand aviation.
Flight 901 was a sightseeing tour that went from New Zealand to Antarctica and back again the same day, never landing in Antarctica.
Since 1977, the airline had conducted this route during the summer season when there is daylight over Antarctica 24 hours a day. In the southern hemisphere, this is the time from November to February. Flight 901 was suspended in 1980.
The next day, 29 November, New Zealand Police established a task force that was sent to Antarctica to recover as many bodies as possible and return them to their families.
The mission was called Operation Overdue. This was the original title of the film. But at the last moment the title was changed. Why? Perhaps because Operation Overdue sounds a bit technical, while Into the Unknown sounds more dramatic.
As explained in the film, the mission of the task force was to recover the bodies, not to investigate the crash.
Surprisingly, the investigation of the crash was conducted in New Zealand by investigators who never visited the crash site.
The film is composed of three elements:
(1) Interviews with some of the policemen who were members of the task force in 1979.
(2) Clips from radio and television reports that were broadcast in 1979 and later.
(3) Re-enactment of certain scenes.
The combination of these three elements works well.
While some scenes are set in New Zealand, most scenes are set in Antarctica during Operation Overdue.
The film crew did not go to Antarctica to shoot the film. The re-enactment was done during winter time in New Zealand. The producers worked hard to re-create the crash site on Mount Erebus, and if you ask me the result is quite convincing.
PART ONE
The task force consisted of 11 policemen including an inspector who was in charge of the operation. In the film we do not meet all of them. I guess it would be confusing to have so many characters who look so much alike when they are dressed to survive the arctic climate.
Only four persons are interviewed: three policemen and the inspector who was in charge of the operation. In the re-enactment these persons are played by young actors. This event took place more than thirty years ago. A fifth person is identified in the re-enactment, but there is no interview with him.
Here are the names of the actors and the characters they play in the film:
** Tama Jaman plays Constable Stuart Leighton, who was only 22 years old in 1979. He was the youngest member of the task force. He still works for New Zealand Police.
** Andrew Munro plays Sergeant Mark Penn, who retired in 1996.
** Erwin Wright plays Sergeant Greg Gilpin, who retired in 2011.
** Fraser Brown plays Inspector Robert “Bob” Mitchell, who was in charge of the operation. He is now retired and lives in the UK.
** Paul Ellis plays Peter Rhodes, an Air New Zealand pilot, who was a member of the team that investigated the crash. His title was Accident Investigation Team Assistant. He did not go to Antarctica, and there is no interview with him.
PART TWO
On Day Two, 29 November, the task force is flown to McMurdo, which is ca. 70 miles from Mount Erebus. On arrival they are greeted by local staff from the United States. On Day Three, 30 November, they attend a class about conditions in the southern continent.
Antarctica is one of the most beautiful places in the world, but it is also one of the most dangerous places in the world. If you are not careful, it will kill you in an instant.
How many of them had been to Antarctica before? No one! How many of them had any experience with rescue work in snow and ice? One!
At this moment many members of the team realise they are completely unprepared for this mission. They are concerned. They ask themselves: Is it madness to try to do this? Are we going to die on the mountain as well?
On Day Four, 1 December, a helicopter takes them to Mount Erebus and drops them off at the crash site. The top of the mountain is ca. 3,800 meters above sea level. The DC-10 hit the mountain about halfway up, ca. 2,500 meters above sea level.
They set up camp. This is where they will have to live and work for the next several days. When they arrive the weather is fine, but soon they learn how quickly the weather can change in this part of the world: a snow storm covers the whole area. Once again, they ask themselves: are we going to survive this mission?
On Day Five, 2 December, they begin the job. What they do becomes a model for crash site investigations in the future. The crash site is divided into a grid, like the squares on a chess board.
The search is systematic, step by step. When they find a body or some personal belongings, they mark the square where it is found. Everything is registered. The two flight recorders are found and shipped back to New Zealand.
On Day Eight, they find the body of the pilot Jim Collins. They also find his notebook, a black ring binder with some technical information on the first pages. On Day Ten, they explore a ravine where some bodies are found. The job is going well, but the members of the team are not feeling well; they are exhausted.
It is not just the physical conditions which are hard, there is also a mental burden. What they see is hard to forget. The combination of these two elements means that they are under a huge pressure.
The team find cameras that belong to some of the passengers. When the films are developed, they show pictures that were taken during the flight. It was a clear day. How could the pilots fly the plane into a mountain in broad daylight? The answer, given by one of the witnesses, is white-out.
Flying in Antarctica is difficult and dangerous.
Since (almost) everything you see is white, there is no perception of depth. When you see something in front of you, you cannot tell if the distance is 100 meters or 1,000 meters. This optical illusion is known as white-out.
On Day Twelve, they find the last body: a member of the crew, a stewardess. There were 257 persons on the plane; 214 bodies are recovered. This is a good result, given the circumstances.
When the work is done, they celebrate. At first, we may think this is a sign of poor taste. How can they celebrate in the middle of a crash site where hundreds of people died? But when we think about it again, we realise that it is not.
After many days filled with death and destruction, they need to get over the stress, they need to clear their minds. The helicopter arrives to fly them back to McMurdo. On Day Fourteen they return to New Zealand. Miraculously, all members of the team survive the mission.
PART THREE
When they returned to New Zealand, their lives were supposed to go back to normal, but it did not work like that. They wanted to forget, but could not forget what they had seen. And nobody else could understand them.
The members of the team were invisible once they were back in New Zealand. They were haunted by this experience for years. The psychological or mental impact of Operation Overdue is an important element in the film.
Finally, in 2007, the members of the team received a special service medal to acknowledge their efforts in the recovery operation. Bob Mitchell received an MBE.
As the explained in the film, this symbolic gesture was important for them, because it gave them some kind of closure.
This film is mostly about Operation Overdue. It is not really an investigation to find out how and why this disaster happened.
This topic is covered briefly at the end of the film. But only about five minutes of the total time are devoted to this topic, and most of this section is taken up by on-screen messages. There is almost no discussion about this topic. I wish the film had been longer; I wish more time had been devoted to this topic.
The discussion about how and why the crash happened is a long and controversial story. It is a shame it is reduced to a brief section at the end of the film.
The accident investigation report released in June 1980 blamed the pilots for the crash. Many people felt the airline wanted to protect its image, so this was a good conclusion for the company. But the public was not satisfied. This is why a Royal Commission of Inquiry was established in July 1980. The commission had only one member: New Zealand High Court Judge Peter Thomas Mahon (1923-1986).
His report was released in the following year (1981). An on-screen message explains his findings:
“The Royal Commission found the dominant cause of the crash was due to a mistake made by airline officials who altered the navigational coordinates to fly directly at Mount Erebus – and omitted to tell the crew.”
Justice Mahon accused the airline of producing an “orchestrated litany of lies.” The airline challenged his findings of a cover-up. The Court of Appeal found he had exceeded his authority with the accusation and that finding was quashed.
Justice Mahon’s appeal to the Privy Council was unsuccessful. However, it said his report “convincingly clears” the pilots of contributing to the disaster.
An on-screen message at the end of the film states:
“The pilots have never been formally exonerated.”
PART FOUR
The following four facts are not mentioned in the film, even though they are highly relevant:
# 1. When Peter Mahon retired from the bench in 1983, he decided to turn his official report from 1981 into a book for the public. The result was published in 1985, one year before his death. The title is Verdict on Erebus.
# 2. In 1988, New Zealand television aired a docudrama about the case. It is a miniseries with four episodes. The title is Erebus: The Aftermath.
As far as I know, it was never released on
DVD. But it is now available on YouTube (where the title has been changed and the year is given as 1997).
# 3. In 2009, thirty years after the crash, the airline apologised to the families of the victims. They did not apologise for the crash itself, but for the way in which the airline had treated the families immediately after the crash. In 1979, there was no systematic information and no kind of support for them.
# 4. In 2011, Paul Holmes published an e-book about the case. The title is Daughters of Erebus.
The author Paul Holmes (1950-2013) was for many years a well-known (and quite controversial) broadcaster in New Zealand.
He explained that he had written this book to get justice for the pilots of the plane. The daughters mentioned in the title are the four daughters of pilot Jim Collins.
The four facts listed above illustrate how this episode played and still plays an important role in the public mind of New Zealand.
These four facts could and should have been mentioned in the film in order to present a more comprehensive account of the case.
CONCLUSION
The re-enactment of Operation Overdue is convincing; and the interviews with the four members of the team that went to Antarctica are gripping. This part of the film is very successful. But the coverage of the investigation of the crash and the subsequent discussion of the case is too compressed.
The story of Flight 901 is important and deserves to be told; in this film, it is done quite well.
In New Zealand the story is not forgotten. It is still a vivid memory; a part of the public debate. But in the rest of the world, the story is not well-known.
This film helps us remember what happened on Mount Erebus on 28 November 1979 and pays tribute to the efforts of the team that recovered the bodies of the victims.
Erebus: Into the Unknown will make a huge impression on most viewers. It is recommended; it is worth watching.
I like this film and I want to give it a good rating, but I cannot go all the way to the top. Why" Because there is a flaw which cannot be ignored. I have to remove one star because of this flaw. This is why I think this film deserves a rating of four stars (80 percent).
PS # 1. Flight 901: The Erebus Disaster is a documentary film which premiered on New Zealand television in 1981. Run time: 51 minutes. This film, which is an episode of the program called Lookout, is avaible on YouTube.
PS # 2. For more information, see the following book:
The Erebus Papers
by Stuart Macfarlane
(1991)
PS # 3. The following items are available online:
** Paul Holmes, “Why I want justice,” New Zealand Herald, 3 September 2011 (an article about his book)
** Henry Wallop, “Mt. Erebus disaster,” The Telegraph, 4 January 2015 (a long and detailed review)
** Peter Bradshaw, “Erebus: into the unknown – a too brief true tale of Antarctic terror,” The Guardian, 8 January 2015 (a short review)
** Allan Hunter, “Compelling mix of documentary and drama,” The Express, 9 January 2015 (a short review)
** Geoffrey Macnab, “A fascinating story but reconstructions fall short,” The Independent, 9 January 2015 (a short review)
** Mark Kermode, review of “Erebus: Into the Unknown,” The Observer, 11 January 2015 (a short review)
PS # 4. Erebus Operation Overdue is a website where you can find additional information about the film and the case in general.
PS # 5. Antarctica: A Frozen History is the title of aa drama-documentary that was shown on the History Channel in 2002 and released on DVD in 2012.
PS # 6. For background information about the southern continent, see this book: Antarctica: An Intimate Portrait of the World’s Most Mysterious Continent by Gabrielle Walker (2012) (2013).
*****
Erebus: Operation Overdue
The original title of the film
*****
Mount Erebus
Antarctica
*****
Verdict on Erebus:
An Airline's Dilemma
By Peter Mahon
(1985)
*****
The Erebus Papers
by Stuart Macfarlane
(1991)
*****
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