In Kon-Tiki, a pair of film-makers attempt to go beyond the headlines of Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl's epic 1947 Pacific Ocean voyage and get to the heart of the man, writes Shane Gilchrist.
More than half a century ago, young Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl made history by sailing a balsawood raft 4300 nautical miles (8000km) across the Pacific Ocean.
The 101-day journey from Callio, Peru, to Raroia atoll, in the Tuamotu Archipelago east of Tahiti, was an attempt to test Heyerdahl's theory that peoples travelling east from South America, not west from Asia, had settled Polynesia.
In 1947, no-one in the scientific community took the Norwegian seriously. One American professor jokingly told Heyerdahl to try sailing from Peru to Polynesia on a balsawood raft. So he did, along with five crew members, of whom only one knew how to sail.
Heyerdahl and his crew frequently reported home by radio, and the Kon-Tiki expedition became an international phenomenon as newspapers and radio stations provided regular updates to a post-World War 2 public.
Heyerdahl's book of the journey, published the following year, was translated into 70 languages and sold more than 50 million copies around the world. His follow-up documentary won an Oscar in 1951.
Childhood friends Joachim Roenning and Espen Sandberg, who grew up in southern Norway, in a town near where Heyerdahl lived, have also made a film about the epic voyage. Titled Kon-Tiki, it opens nationwide on Thursday.
In doing so, they have attempted to go beyond the headlines. After all, most great adventures are also a story of how humans relate and react under stress.
''We grew up with this story,'' Roenning says via telephone from Norway recently.
''Thor lived in a neighbouring town and was a great inspiration.
''Not only was he a great adventurer, he was also a great film-maker, the only Norwegian to win an Academy Award. He was very well-respected. His great contribution was to make people all over the world interested in history and archaeology.''
Fellow director Sandberg says he also wanted to explore what drove Heyerdahl to risk his life (and that of his crew), to leave behind his two young sons and sacrifice his marriage.
''Our screenwriter, Peter Skavlan, had worked with Thor several times and he said Thor had a black hole in his heart - that was his regret over his first wife; how he treated her.
''The price of fame is often paid by others. We wanted to look behind the picture that he used to paint of himself, because he was a genius when it came to public relations.
''Even on that raft he brought one guy who could navigate, but he had two to operate the radio. He was very media-savvy. It was the world's first reality show. It was something that caught the imagination of people all over the world,'' Sandberg says.
''I think we all like some exotic adventure. He sold 50 million copies of his book. I don't think that's because so many people are into migration theory.''
Kon-Tiki begins with Heyerdahl and his new bride, Liv, sailing to the remote paradise of Fatu Hiva in French Polynesia.
Determined to escape civilisation, the couple live as natives for a year and it was during that time that Heyerdahl built his new theory of migration: principally that the currents in that area of the South Pacific Ocean would favour seafarers travelling in an east-to-west direction.
Heyerdahl heads to New York to promote his theory, but no-one believes him. Though he has a fear of water and can't swim, he decides to build a raft based on ancient drawings, using nine balsa logs lashed together with hemp rope.
In the foreword to the 35th edition of Kon-Tiki, Across the Pacific by Raft, Heyerdahl writes: ''The Kon-Tiki expedition opened my eyes to what the ocean really is. It is a conveyor and not an isolator.
''The ocean has been man's highway from the days he built the first buoyant ships, long before he tamed the horse, invented wheels and cut roads through the virgin jungles.''
Heyerdahl, who died in 2002, made other voyages after Kon-Tiki, sailing reed boats (woven by Peruvian tribespeople) from North Africa to the Caribbean and from Iraq to the Red Sea.
However, a half-century after Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki expedition, his theories on intercontinental human migration are still being debated.
''He spent 10 years trying to get his theory accepted,'' Roenning says.
''I think it was out of desperation that he did the journey.
''In a way, Espen and I, as film-makers, can identify with that. We worked on this project for five years and it gets to a point where you lose track of the original goal and it becomes more about the journey.
''It is not until that moment when we step out on that raft that we realise, 'Oh, wow, we are actually shooting this film'. That was a moment of angst. It was daunting making this film,'' Roenning says in reference to the various locations used, from Norway to Malta to Thailand and the Maldives.
''The budget was only about $US15 million. For a Norwegian film, that is unheard of. We didn't know how it was going to turn out, so it was an amazing journey for us as well.''
Roenning points out that although Kon-Tiki is a drama, he and Sandberg were at pains to balance the demands of narrative pace with a desire to remain close to the truth.
''In Norway, there are a lot of people who have an opinion about Thor. But we also have a responsibility to the film, so you have to create drama and tweak characters.''
The directors talked at great lengths to Heyerdahl's grandson, Olav, who, with five others, made the same voyage on a similar vessel, named the Tangaroa, in 2006.
''Olav said that once you've been on a raft for a month, you talk less and less, so we went to great lengths to distil that dialogue,'' Roenning says.
''It is always important for us to be truthful.''
See it
Kon-Tiki opens at cinemas nationwide on Thursday.
