‘Pole to Pole with Will Smith’: A measure of will and power

Have you ever wondered how cinematic mid-life crises look when money is no object and danger is a lifestyle choice? Of course you have. We are all vain enough to watch rich people do just about anything — including, if required, read the phonebook aloud inside their walk-in wardrobes.

National Geographic’s ‘Pole to Pole with Will Smith’ lures you in with exactly this promise. On the surface, it performs as agreeable “second-screen” fare — a term film executives use to describe content that is meant to be played as you endlessly scroll smaller screens.

But about 10 minutes into the seven-part docu-series, it becomes clear that Smith has other, icier ambitions — quite literally, the opening episode drops him into the isolating white nothingness of West Antarctica, trudging towards the geographical South Pole.

From there, the show unfurls into a 100-day, seven-continent odyssey, hopping through some of the most scientifically dense corners of the planet before culminating at the North Pole. The title, refreshingly, does exactly what it says on the tin.

The premise flirts constantly with danger, foolishness and sermonising, but if anyone can pull it off, it’s one of the Smiths — Hollywood’s most lovable set of nut jobs.

‘Pole to Pole’ is mustered as an ode to Smith’s mentor, the late explorer and Harvard professor Dr Allen Counter, and the actor and rapper approaches the journey with a curious mix of reverence, wonder and motivational speaker energy.

Formally, the series is far more interesting than it has any right to be. Vast, almost obscene drone shots of glaciers, rainforests and everything in between are intercut with handheld footage of Smith chatting into a camera. Adding another layer of nuance, the confessionals are especially striking: subjects are placed dead centre, uncomfortably close to the lens, ditching the usual dimly-lit faux-intimacy for something confrontational and oddly hypnotic.

The edit bay too does heavy lifting, blending infographics, casual banter and glossy B-roll into something that flows smoothly without tipping into the ‘edu-tainment’ films your teacher made you watch when she’d given up on the day.

That said, the editors clearly had a field day with stock footage — when Smith is shocked to learn that Antarctica is technically a desert, the series cuts to sandy dunes for far too long.

The show’s real balancing act lies between science and introspection. There are genuinely fascinating nuggets — did you know the largest freshwater rivers on the planet are actually in the sky; or that there are so many species in the labyrinthian curves of the Amazon that you could potentially discover some on camera? — alongside moments of self-reflection, which occasionally overreach into the preachy.

Smith himself is the je ne sais quoi, disarming tension with his trademark Black humour, punctuated always with an enthusiastic sprinkling of eccentric dad jokes.

Having said that, though, celluloid doesn’t exist in a vacuum. So, it becomes imperative to lay on newsprint the fact that the series arrives in the shadow of Smith’s 2022 Oscars on-stage assault on comedian Chris Rock, denting Will’s decades-long universally-loved reputation; and accusations of predatory behaviour made by a violinist against him.

For all its indulgences and earnestness, ‘Pole to Pole with Will Smith’ remains an oddly compelling watch: part travelogue, part science lesson, part soul-searching exercise.

Come for the poles, stay for the kooky man quietly trying to recalibrate his compass.