Into Eternity

In a deceptively low-key manner, Danish filmmaker Michael Madsen has beautifully crafted one of the most provocative movies of the year.

Madsen interviews experts galore, but few seem to know what's going to happen with this project in the next decade -- let alone 100,000 years.

Madsen casts doubt on the notion that this Pandora's box will never be opened, either by some cataclysmic event, like another Ice Age, or drilling by future generations who may not be aware of Onkalo, or even able to decipher warnings of its contents. Something terrible seems likely to happen-just not today.

There is something apocalyptically awful about Onkalo, to be sure, but the impulse behind it is noble, and the installation itself has an undeniable grandeur.

Most important, given that Onkalo will hide and bury just some of Finland's waste, what about everyone else's? [14 & 21 Feb. 2011, p. 139]

Into Eternity has the grandeur of ominous suggestion, but might have benefitted from a director more creatively unbound-an Errol Morris ready to play around at the end of the world.

Unfortunately, Madsen (a Danish filmmaker, not the American actor) has an approach to this rich topic that is repetitive and simplistic, as if he wasn't quite sure how to fill out even a brief feature.