MOVING BEYOND THE CONSTRAINTS OF THE MORTAL SELF: Universal images of narcissism in Jan Troell’s The Flight of the Eagle

Long before the film’s title materializes, stark white letters, A TRUE STORY appear, followed by an image of an austere, endless horizon, a ganzfeld where land is scarcely delineated from sea or sky. Black and white photos follow, articulated only as the camera zooms in. With mounting terror, the viewer recognizes a blackened skeleton, its mouth open in horror, wide pits for eyes. These macabre photos, the remains of the ill-fated 1897 Polar expedition of August Salomon Andrée, are the ending of the ‘true’ story that forms the basis for Jan Troell’s mystically beautiful film The Flight of the Eagle (1982).