Movie Review

Directed by Zachariahs Kunuk, N.F.B./Igloolik Isooma Productions, English subtitles, starring: Natar Ungalaak (Atanarjuat), Sylvia Ivalu (Atuat), Peter Henry Arnatsiak (Oki), Lucy Tulagarjuk (Puja), 2 hrs 47 min, 2002.

This quintessentially Canadian flic is a tragic tale of murder, jealousy and infidelity through three generations in an Inuit community prior to the arrival of Europeans. There is some nudity (Atanarjuat runs naked across endless miles of ice) coarse language (Inuit are shamelessly bawdy) and ritualized violence (used to prevent greater violence in a small community). Whew!

We first meet Atanajuat as a baby in the hood of his mother's parka. His father is the butt of community jokes because he is an incompetent hunter and suffers frequent bouts of hard luck. The family is poor and dependent on the largess of other hunters. They have to eat the "rear ends"of seals and caribou. Somehow, Atanarjuat and his older brother, Amakjuat, reach young adulthood and have formed an alliance to hunt together and be both a family and an economic unit. Oki is a rival to them. His father had been the bane of their father's life and there is reference to a murder in a previous generation. Oki thinks he can continue the same kind of arrogant patronizing in this generation. Atuat, a local beauty, has been pledged to Oki, an arrangement of their fathers, since they were young children but in a contest she is 'won' by Atanarjuat and they form a devoted little family unit.

When Atuat is pregnant and Atanarjuat goes hunting he needs a helpmate and so Puja, Oki's sister, goes on the trip and she is incorporated into Atanarjuak's family as his wife as well. She's a bit of a tart and makes a play for Atanarjuak's brother, Amaqjuat and there is a huge blowup. She ends up pleading forgiveness from Atuat and from her sister in law. She is forgiven and reincorporated into the family but later betrays her husband and brother in law when she sees Oki sneaking up to the tent to harm them. Oki makes an attempt on Atanarjuak's life killing his brother Amaqjuat in the process. It is here that The Fast Runner takes off across the ice in fear for his life and ends up in the camp of another family many miles away. He is exhausted and wounded and stays with them many months to recover. His family thinks him dead. They are forced to live in poverty and starvation in a camp dominated by Oki. Puja returns to her brother's igloo and lives in relative ease while her fellow wife starves.

Atanarjuat returns, bestows a fine garment on Atuat, dismisses Puja, defeats Oki in a fight and pronounces "The killing stops now!" It is a scene reminiscent of a Comic retelling of The Resurrection; a just man is betrayed and denied by his friends and killed by his enemies but he returns and forgives them. This is no act of cheap grace, for Oki's grandmother and matriarch of the clan decrees that her grandchildren and their co-conspirators must leave the camp and never come back. Oki has refused to bend to The Fates and he is broken in the process. Their leaving the camp is the tragic outcome of his pride, arrogance and selfishness.

Dealing with pervasive evil in the community is the theme of this story and the way in which forgiveness is the only possible coping strategy. Paul says in Romans 3, "I have already charged that all humans, Jews as well as Greeks, are under the power of sin" (RSV) Karl Barth in his Epistle to the Romans comments on this passage, "…the children of God and the natural children of the world are…children of wrath. They are, without exception, in subjection to the foreign power of sin." No 'unspoiled noble savage' here.

This is a compelling love story with a heroic figure at its centre. His suffering is redemptive and his soul's capacity for forgiveness points us to Good News.

While I enjoyed the film immensely there were times when I would have found a chart of the family tree helpful, much like reading a Russian Novel. It is confusing for us southerners when a matriarch refers to a young woman as "my little grandmother". With all that snow as background, the subtitles are hard to read. The dialogue is very fast so don't dawdle in reading the English!