Passage is an entertainingly complex film about Sir John Franklin’s disastrous attempt to find the Northwest Passage and John Rae’s mission to find out what happened that works on several levels. Not only does Passage combine documentary film making with dramatized scenes, but it also documents the research that went into the making of these scenes.

One one level, the film works as an interesting exploration into the research that is necessary in the creation of a fact based film. The actor who is to play John Rae goes to great lengths, including learning how to build an igloo, to understand who John Rae was and what he went through. Following the actors as they learn more about the incidents, the film reveals the story of Franklin and Rae and traces the reaction that Rae’s report had back in England. What Rae had learned was that Franklin’s ship had become stuck in the ice and its crew wandered off on land, only to succumb to cannibalism. Influential voices at the time, including Charles Dickens, spoke out against the possibility of cannibalism and blamed the native population instead for the demise of the crew.

The film works on another level as an Inuit scholar works with the filmmaker and attempts to change the perception that the native population killed the crew, raising racial issues since many of the current day scholars hold fast to the idea that educated, Christian Englishmen would not be capable of such an act but that Inuit people would easily attack an kill tired and hungry men.

This unique, multi-layered approach infuses Passage with a freshness that often eludes history-based documentaries.