Illuminated only by the burning match he holds in his fingers, a man speaks directly to the camera. But he’s not talking to you. He’s addressing people of the future, perhaps 100,000 years from now. “We have buried something from you,” he says, “to protect you.”
The man is Michael Madsen, a Danish filmmaker and artist. The location is a tunnel, under construction deep in Finnish bedrock. And the something that will be buried — that event, too, is in the future — is radioactive waste.
Into Eternity is a documentary about a massive crypt called Onkalo (Finnish for “hiding place”), the world’s first permanent underground vault for nuclear detritus. The movie considers the practical problems of burying the deadly stuff so effectively that it won’t be disturbed during the hundreds of centuries necessary for it to decay. But because the time frame is so long — far longer than recorded human history — these problems become philosophical, even mystical.
Released 6 Jan. 2010. Directed by Michael Madsen. Documentary film.
