esrosedotblog

SNOWED

It took a while to get into

Atanarjuat / Fast Runner (2001)

but they give you plenty of time. It is 172 minutes long.

Filmed in Inuktitut and with a cast of all Inuit people, it gives us a thousand year old legend.

I did not know this until I read Ebert's review incidentally. What is cool/kool about it is that the whole thing seems very contemporary. There is magic, but what's to hold us back from believing in it? We all have a lot of magic and/or magical thinking in our lives.

A good and evil yarn, it is also a way of seeing a way of life for the Inuit people which 'is still within living memory'.

Sometimes it is a bit tough to watch; animals getting shoved around and killed and all but these people live on the edge.

In the same way it shows how a small society has to protect itself, sometimes from itself, to survive.

It is some work to get into. I just sat with it. I am programmed for 'western' (in this case southern) ideas of pace and story line and so on. But, it's gentle motion is seductive and it gets to you. Well, me. Let's stay with 'I' statements.

Did I mention that the two leading men, one good, the other evil, are wonderful to watch. Incidentally, the women are very powerful in this film as, I guess, they are in the culture which appears to be only mildly hierarchical.

I liked it a lot. It is a NYTimes Best Film and I will give it a 4 out of Netflix5 because I think it could have been shorter and, at times, the plot got a bit obscured by the need to show all the details of things like scraping seal hides of fat. One session would have been sufficient.