The Edge

Late evening after the work schedule for day was completed I watched The Edge a survival film in a wilderness with Anthony Hopkins. The film has various themes with the intended most important that strength of character and knowledge will enable one to prevail regardless fo age wealth power etc. it also covers how well we know our partners, maleness, male competitiveness and bonding and the value of life and the limitations of wealth. Hopkins decides to accompany his young wife on a modelling enterprise, in part because he suspects a relationship between her and the photographer.

The location is remote North American where they are the only visitors in a lakeside residence and are warned not leave food uncovered because this is man attacking and man eating wild bear country. There is truth in the tale but is it part of a ploy to get Hopkins to go down stairs at night armed with a flashlight to make his wife a sandwich where he encounters what appears to be a bear but is only a head jape before revealing a room filled with the other members of the group surprising him on the birthday he thought the others had forgotten. His wife give shim a valuable watch with an inscription and the photographer an expensive knife.

The owner of the property tries to interest Hopkins in an investment proposal to develop the site to attract more visitors. Hopkins who has been reading a book on survival agrees to go with the photographer and his assistant on the short plane ride up river to the lodge of an Indian hunter whose photographer impresses and who he wants to use in the photo shoot. When they arrive the find the man has go out hunting and they take the plane to land where they were told he might be only to run into a flock of birds which downs the plane in the water with the pilot killed the other three just about surviving in the cold

Hopkins says that because they were not expected to have travelled this far north the search planes and helicopters will not come so they will have to travel south to be rescued. He shows that if you place a magnetised watch hand on a leaf on water it will show North and the direction to be taken .However this does not work and they travel in a circle after encountering a bear which begins to track them and does for the Assistant who demonstrates that he is the weakest minded of the trio.

Despite a denial and the opinion that the photographer will attempt to kill Hopkins to gain his wife and the money, and after managing to overcome the bear, eat its flesh and use its fur against the elements, finding a deserted cabin and useable canoe to travel further south using the night stars and the day sun as their compass, Hopkins works out that the photographer and his wife have been lovers and that she although cares for him has been after his money, the photographer does attempt to kill Hopkins but falls into a bear trap and dies when at the point of rescue.

Hopkins returns to the lodge where his wife and the media are waiting and he gives her the engraved watch she gave to the photographer signalling the end of their relationship and his serious intention to remain in the wilderness perhaps putting into effect the development plan shown to him on the first night. There are therefore many stock characters, issue as well as well established themes. Hopkins is always watchable and one wants him to survive because of his commitment to mind over matter.