Not an auspicious start for my viewing of Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner). I got into the auditorium late because the theater (shockingly, not Regal Cinemas) handled poorly the sell-out of the original time at which I had wanted to see the movie -- long story, take my word for it. Because it takes me about an hour to get to this theater, I was determined to cram in two movies, so I reversed the order in which I had planned to see them, watching The Last Kiss first and Atanarjuat second. The movies overlapped by 10 minutes or so, so I was late getting into Atanarjuat. I assumed that the number of tickets sold corresponded to the number of seats in the auditorium, but either this is wrong, or some people snuck in without tickets, because not a single seat in the whole place was empty. So I had to sit on the floor for three hours, which is pretty much as uncomfortable as you think it would be.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed Atanarjuat and mostly stayed engaged, despite my legs falling asleep and general discomfort. In style, it reminded me a bit of La Terra Trema -- it seemed sometimes like a slice-of-exotic-life documentary overlaid with a skeleton plot. The plot isn't by any means weak (nor is the plot of La Terra Trema); indeed, it's a classic, timeless myth of good vs. evil from a fable the Inuit have told for generations. Rather, I mean that both movies use "real people" rather than actors (though some in Atanarjuat are professional actors) and are concerned as much with intimately showing us a culture we've probably never seen before as with telling a story.
The Inuit culture is certainly unfamiliar, and director Zacharias Kunuk goes to great lengths to make it as authentic as possible. All the performers and nearly all of the crew are not only Inuit, but from Igloolik, where the story takes place and where it was filmed, and Inuit artisans made the clothing and props for the film in the traditional manner, using only materials that would have been available to the characters. If you're interested, the film's official site is very informative, particularly this section on how the Inuit culture guided the film and how the film helped not only the general community with new jobs and local spending, but the nascent Inuit cinema by training cast and crew members with a lot of interest but no experience in filmmaking. And this map where you can trace the events of the story over the landscape, is pretty cool.
The endless, stark landscapes emphasize the practical need for the people to live in communities and the psychic need for close-knit families; those who strike out on their own find life difficult. Not to be Ms. Insensitive Dumb American, but sometimes I had trouble telling the characters apart -- they all wear big, bulky coats with hoods that conceal most of their faces. I was forever getting confused about who was talking to whom, which tremendously complicates the fairly straightforward plot. (I wish I had known about the costume design section of the website, which details how a long coat denotes a leader; it would have helped me make the right identifications more quickly and easily.)
If you're
able to enjoy the luxury of an actual seat in the theater,
the movie will surely engross you even more than it did me. And I
do recommend seeing it on the big screen; TV will undoubtedly diminish
its impact and beauty.
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