Into Eternity

Directed by Michael Madsen

(Not Rated)

***

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This “jaw-dropping” documentary tackles a subject that’s “almost beyond comprehension,” said Peter Bradshaw in the London Guardian. Some 200 miles outside Helsinki, Finnish contractors are currently building the first underground vault made for the permanent storage of radioactive nuclear waste. Its dimensions are staggering enough: Onkalo, as it’s called, will ultimately tunnel some three miles into bedrock. But more numbing is the thought that, to be successful, the facility must last 100,000 years. “Some viewers may be put off by the film’s solemnity,” said Mark Jenkins in NPR.com. But we’re talking about a project designed to outlive everything else created by contemporary civilization. Even its conceptual challenges are profound. Filmmaker Michael Madsen interviews scientists, engineers, and elected officials to probe such issues. Should we forewarn future generations of the danger lurking beneath them? Will warnings only incite curiosity and put humanity at risk? “This delicately lurid documentary” is “meant to boggle the mind and inspire awe,” said J. Hoberman in The Village Voice. “It does.”