Into Eternity: A Film for the Future
Every day, the world over, large amounts of high-level radioactive waste created by nuclear power plants is placed in interim storage, which is vulnerable to natural disasters, man-made disasters, and to societal changes. In Finland the world’s first permanent repository is being hewn out of solid rock – a huge system of underground tunnels - that must last 100,000 years as this is how long the waste remains hazardous.
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- Cast:
- Michael Madsen
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Reviews
Good concept, poorly executed.
It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.
This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.
Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.
Even if you have no interest in where energy comes from or in nuclear technology, this documentary is so beautifully filmed and produced that there is enjoyment in just watching it.The core question posed by this documentary is: how do you warn countless future generations, for 100,000 years to stay away from the radioactive waste? The documentary maker asks questions of the people involved. Their responses are often chilling.There is also some dark humor in it - the expressions on the faces of the nuclear power executives when asked what happens after hundreds or thousands of years have passed.An extremely important documentary for this moment in history. Everyone should watch this.
okay, I'm a huge fan of documentaries, but Into Eternity is just a killer.It's not the fact that it is well grounded and has it's facts together.what really really hit me was the visual work combined with the music. this documentary is now my most favorite Sci-Fi film. the scenes are disturbingly furturistic with a mix of post-apocalyptic elements. you feel a constant threat looming over your head while watching this amazingly beautiful film. time unfolds as Madsen leads you into a project that wants to endure longer than the modern man. and for the first time in my life I felt really small and grabbed the scope of the world we're living in. 100.000 years is an awful long time, and it is a bold move to try to achieve something this lasting.watch the film, relax and let it just take you away for 90 minutes. I dó not regret it. and I'm definitely going to see it again. and again. and again
I don't believe I am exaggerating when I claim that this is one of the coolest works of film I've ever watched. It's a thought experiment packaged within a brilliantly paced, well directed, and aptly scored documentary. The subject matter is critically important to anyone with half an eye on the distant future, and writer/director Michael Madsen does not fail to put matters into perspective.This won't be for everyone, since it doesn't spoon-feed the viewer easy answers, nor does it cater at all to those with little imagination. But if you like thinking about topics that generally fall only under the scope of the science fiction genre, and you don't mind tackling questions that are both grand and open-ended, then this documentary will be time well spent.
If you look only at the subject matter which is building a long 3 mile tunnels down 500 meters into bed rock it sounds more like a theme that you would see on a television series like mega structures filled with high-tech, how did they do it kind of thing. Here, however, the technology to do this project is hardly mentioned as digging deep holes in the ground such are used in mining has gone on a very long time. Here instead we see more of a scene about timelessness and about the unknown. Of course we have a pretty remarkable project being constructed and then filled over a 100 year period named Onkalo. As no one will be involved in both the start and the completion of the project when finished, the plan is to abandon the structure and hope that no one will attempt to enter for at least 100,000 years. The deep moodiness of the film with its haunting music and barren forest scenes with gray landscape tries to force you into a mood of the vastness of time. To put this into perspective, the pyramids were built about 4000 years ago, though we think cave dwellers lived 30,000 years ago and maybe humans have actually been around for 100,000 years. But will they even exist as long as this storage facility is supposed to? No one knows. When it is sealed in 2120 do we just forget about it or do you warn people about it? Will warning people make them want to explore? Will there still be humans like we are, or will they be much different as we are to Neanderthal man. These are some of the things discussed in the film. It is short, only one hour and 15 min. The director likes long sweeping zooming in traveling shots. This work definitely gives you a feeling that you don't get from many films, but one not easy to describe. Near the end of the film as two workers are just walking into one section of the tunnel it in itself is totally non-remarkable and could be shot in any mine or cave in the world but the mood of the scene and the music behind is effective and you get some feeling that it is actually quite difficult to create something you hope will last 100,000 years. A unique film and the mood it imparts makes it worth more than one viewing.