Explorer

Fiennes is admirably open throughout, with seemingly no thought of a public image to burnish.

The organization of the film, jumping back and forth in time, is distracting. But the subject is never less than enthralling.

The approach of director Matthew Dyas, who gives the archive material the appearance of found footage, adds to the mythic romance of Fiennes’s life story.

If it adds little in the way of dissenting voices or a different viewpoint, Explorer tells the tale of a remarkable, stranger-than-fiction life and emerges as an affecting, entertaining portrait of a true eccentric.

There’s plenty of white-knuckle footage from the archive, as well as reflections of old muckers. Fiennes says that in his darkest, diciest moments in peril he imagined his heroes – the father and grandfather he never met – watching over him.