"Red Knot" is a good film with a very ominous title. Vincent Kartheiser and Olivia Thirlby excel in their roles as Peter and Chloe, newly-marrieds who impulsively honeymoon aboard a freighter bound for Antarctica. And how could cinematography in the golden age of video be not excellent? In general, this film's reach does not exceed its grasp. If the documentary "March of the Penguins" could be combined with the Benedict Cumberbatch/Sam O'Neill mini-series, "To the Ends of the Earth," you'd have "Red Knot."
Independent movies in 2017 in general rely far too much on 1) non-verbal narrative--characters' lingering, meaningful looks--and 2) infatuation with digital photography. "Red Knot's" *story* is excellent, so why muddy an excellent story with excellent lead actors and excellent cinematography with a confused and confusing script?
The story is basically Chloe's, not Peter's. Starry-eyed about marriage, she learns how fast a claustrophobic sea voyage will make you develop your inner self. Strangely, the addition of the kinds of scenes that could have made this movie great would have cost no money--for example, the prescient scene where Chloe decides to skip out on the first mate's (?) pre-voyage lecture about safety in case of troubles on the high seas. More script would have made "Red Knot" a hit.
In Chloe's case, inner self means not only skipping safety instructions for sex in a bunk bed but expedited understanding of a husband's potentially murderous or suicidal character. Peter's quick disdain for her in favor of the company of highly trained researchers superficially explains his unusual choice of their honeymoon trip. But this is *his* honeymoon, not Chloe's.
Billy Campbell as the Captain is very good and slightly mysterious--but is he or anyone at all real or imagined, flesh-and-blood or a dream? Because of many never-explained jumps to pastoral green settings, it's unclear whether "Red Knot" is not in fact entirely surreal, a prolonged nightmare like the one Chloe has in the middle of the film. When Chloe's claustrophobia gets too much, the Captain is always there to rescue her. Almost always. A better-developed script wouldn't necessarily have ruined "Red Knot's" impressionism. More dialogue or even more development of Chloe's growing loneliness and feelings of abandonment (at the antipodes of the planet) wouldn't have undercut the artiness the film clearly craved. And Peter's ultimate reveal, his vulnerability, would have been more believable if the audience actually had narrative to support it.
There are no minor characters. There are talking heads but not characters; and this isn't a bad thing, because even the title, "Red Knot," makes it clear this movie is about the breathtaking isolation of marriage without communication or love.
The final sequence is absolutely unsatisfying. That the film's first scene opens with what will also be its last scene is additionally weird--or else a statement that *all* of "Red Knot" is symbolic. Antarctica's terrifying barrenness is not the type of terrain where inexperienced travelers would be allowed to roam at will. In motorboats. Motorboats they pilot alone. So maybe even Antarctica is a cold desolate world Chloe has dreamt, as well as a real ice-world.
So is "Red Knot's" conclusion as dire as all the cliffs and snow and vanishing foot-tracks suggest? I don't know. Is the film to be taken at all literally? I don't know. Is Vincent Kartheiser's trademark (apparently) cruel aloof lover sincerely capable of lying to his bride in order to keep her? Don't know that, either.
The odd scenes of penguins on paradisaical green grass may be the best clue that "Red Knot" is just as impossible and not to be taken literally. That doesn't detract from the story of Chloe's premature, fast-tracked journey to the heart of marital darkness.