I spent 3 hours at the movies last night watching a
movie that most on this list would be very interested
in seeing. It's been almost 24 hours and I'm still
thinking about it.

Once in the theater it took me several minutes before
I new for sure that this was not a documentary but a
drama.  The story follows an Inuit tribe and tells a
very interesting story while documenting the eating
habits, living conditions, and lifestyle of these
people we talk so much about on this list.

I read a review about this film today and the reviewer
called it the greatest Canadian film of all time and I
agree. If you can find this movie in your area I would
highly recommend that you take the time to see it.

  Here's Roger Eberts review!




THE FAST RUNNER / (ATANARJUAT)
**** (Not rated)


June 28, 2002




We could begin with the facts about "The Fast Runner."
It is the first film shot in Inuktitut, the language
of the Inuit peoples who live within the Arctic
Circle. It was made with an Inuit cast, and a
90-percent Inuit crew. It is based on a story that is
at least 1,000 years old. It records a way of life
that still existed within living memory.

Or we could begin with the feelings. The film is about
romantic tensions that lead to tragedy within a small,
closely knit community of people who depend on one
another for survival, surrounded by a landscape of ice
and snow. It shows how people either learn to get
along under those circumstances, or pay a terrible
price.

Or we could begin with the lore. Here you will see
humans making a living in a world that looks, to us,
like a barren wasteland. We see them fishing, hunting,
preparing their kill, scraping skins to make them into
clothing, tending the lamps of oil that illuminate
their igloos, harvesting the wild crops that grow in
the brief summertime, living with the dogs that pull
their sleds.

Or we could begin with the story of the film's
production. It was shot with a high-definition digital
video camera, sidestepping the problems that
cinematographers have long experienced while using
film in temperatures well below zero. Its script was
compiled from versions of an Inuit legend told by
eight elders. The film won the Camera d'Or, for best
first film, at Cannes, and was introduced at Telluride
by the British stage director Peter Sellars; telling
the story of its origin, he observed, "In most
cultures, a human being is a library."

We could begin in all of those ways, or we could
plunge into the film itself, an experience so
engrossing it is like being buried in a new
environment. Some find the opening scene
claustrophobic. It takes place entirely inside an
igloo, the low lighting provided only by oil lamps,
most of the shots in closeup, and we do not yet know
who all the characters are. I thought it was an
interesting way to begin: To plunge us into this
community and share its warmth as it shelters against
the cold, and then to open up and tell its story.

We meet two brothers, Amaqjuaq (Pakkak Innukshuk),
known as the Strong One, and Atanarjuat (Natar
Ungalaaq), known as the Fast Runner. They are part of
a small group of Inuit including the unpleasant Oki
(Peter-Henry Arnatsiaq), whose father is the leader of
the group. There is a romantic problem. Oki has been
promised Atuat (Sylvia Ivalu), but she and Atanarjuat
are in love. Just like in Shakespeare. In the most
astonishing fight scene I can recall, Atanarjuat
challenges Oki, and they fight in the way of their
people: They stand face to face, while one solemnly
hits the other, there is a pause, and the hit is
returned, one blow after another, until one or the
other falls.

Atanarjuat wins, but it is not so simple. He is happy
with Atuat, but eventually takes another wife, Puja
(Lucy Tulugarjuk), who is pouty and spoiled and put on
earth to cause trouble. During one long night of the
midnight sun, she is caught secretly making love to
Amaqjuaq, and banished from the family. It is, we
gather, difficult to get away with adultery when
everybody lives in the same tent.

Later there is a shocking murder. Fleeing for his
life, Atanarjuat breaks free, and runs across the
tundra--runs and runs, naked. It is one of those movie
sequences you know you will never forget.

At the end of the film, over the closing titles, there
are credit cookies showing the production of the film,
and we realize with a little shock that the film was
made now, by living people, with new technology. There
is a way in which the intimacy of the production and
the 172-minute running time lull us into accepting the
film as a documentary of real life. The actors, many
of them professional Inuit performers, are without
affect or guile: They seem sincere, honest, revealing,
as real people might, and although the story involves
elements of melodrama and even soap opera, the
production seems as real as a frozen fish.

I am not surprised that "The Fast Runner" has been a
box office hit in its opening engagements. It is
unlike anything most audiences will ever have seen,
and yet it tells a universal story. What's unique is
the patience it has with its characters: The
willingness to watch and listen as they reveal
themselves, instead of pushing them to the front like
little puppets and having them dance through the
story. "The Fast Runner" is passion, filtered through
ritual and memory.




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