The Story of Robert Peary's Adventures - Movie Review Example

Our nation has great discoveries and inventors who should not simply be forgotten because they were of a different race. The struggle and anonymity Matthew Henson endured after his trek should never have happened. This movie does a very good job of reminding us that we are a nation of adventurers. Black and White.History, the saying goes, is written by the winners. As the melancholy English poet Thomas Gray eulogized in his mid-17th century poem "Elegy in a County Churchyard," there is a vast wealth of unrealized human potential resting six feet beneath our feet.

How many Miltons and Shakespeares, he asked, have passed us by because of a rigid and unforgiving social system that refused to allow those of humble birth to rise above their station"Perhaps in this neglected spot is laidSome heart once pregnant with celestial fireFull many a flower is born to blush unseenAnd waste its sweetness on the desert air."Textbooks happily proclaim that American Admiral Robert Peary discovered the North Pole, but how many of these same books tell the story of the other American who accompanied him on this tortuous and dangerous mission, Mr.

Mathew Henson Glory and Honor tells the sadly forgotten story of a man who, because of his "unfortunate racial heritage" (Henson was an African-American) was conveniently consigned to the dusty back shelves of history.Too bad that the filmmakers didn't seize the opportunity to take this little known tale of extraordinary courage and determination and make it into the inspiring cultural document it so easily could have become. Instead, we have a by-the-books chronologically organized re-telling of the many Arctic expeditions of Peary and Henson that provides us with very few insights into either man's character.

Henry Czerny plays Peary with an inscrutable stiffness that appears to accurately reflect Peary's cold and aloof character but gives us few clues as to his obsessive behavior until very late in the movie when it is far too late. Delroy Lindo has the advantage of playing the much warmer and well-rounded Henson, and he handles the role with a nice combination of dignity and passion.However, the film's ultimate failure to move us lies with Kevin Hooks' direction. Scenes that should have us frozen with fear, particularly the many brutal and doomed attempts to forge the arctic wastelands, devoid of food or sense of direction, are so prosaically directed that what should instill dread and horror merely leaves us feeling slightly uncomfortable.

It is a shame that the movie itself was not told with more originality and less earnestness. As it stands, the movie is only slightly more interesting than the lifeless textbooks that ignored Henson's story all these years.On the other hand, the book Negro Explorer at the North Pole: The Autobiography of Matthew Henson who is personally written by Matthew Alexander Henson speaks about Commander Robert Peary reaching the North Pole on April 6, 1909, and one other American was with him-Matthew Henson, a black man from Maryland who had been Peary's faithful companion through 22 years of polar exploration.

This is Henson's story in his own words, from his early years as a sailor to his meeting Robert Peary and their multiple expeditions to the North Pole. Filled with hair-breadth escapes from disaster and haunting evocations of life in the Arctic, this classic of exploration literature reveals Henson as the true hero of the journey, one who had been forced to accept a lower status because of his race. It was Henson who learned to speak the native tongue of the Eskimos, Henson who handled the dogs and broke the trail, and Henson who arrived first at the North Pole after being purposely left behind by Peary.