I am one of probably three Canadians - I think the other two are in hiding - who doesn't believe that "Atanarjuat - The Fast Runner" is a great film. Every Canadian film critic I have read has declared this to be a masterpiece, or close to it. The critic at the Globe and Mail, which modestly calls itself Canada's "National Newspaper", gave "Atanarjuat" four stars. I cannot remember any film, at least not in recent years, receiving that kind of accolade from the Globe.
I went to see "Atanarjuat" at an art theatre in Ottawa, full of eager anticipation. The trailers I had seen had been promising. The image of a naked man running for his life across the Arctic ice was irresistible. And then there was the Arctic itself, vast and magnificent in endless whiteness and desolation. The opening scenes of the film were stark and arresting, and I settled down to enjoy the next three hours. Unhappily, though, thirty minutes later I was squirming in my seat and checking my watch, moaning almost audibly that there were still more than two hours to go.
Frankly, I found "Atanarjuat" to be an amateurish and frequently boring film, however well-intentioned. The boredom is occasioned in large measure by the fact that it's at least an hour too long. There are some good sequences and some indelible images, but these, in my opinion, founder under the awkward weight of the whole. I have described the film to friends as an "Arctic Western", not greatly different in content from the hundreds of melodramatic "oaters" that flowed out of the Hollywood machine in the thirties, forties and fifties.
In "Atanarjuat", we have two "good" brothers battling three "bad" brothers and their wicked, seductive sister. Atanarjuat and the elder bad brother compete for the same woman and Atanarjuat wins. The three bad brothers murder one of the good brothers. Atanarjuat escapes - just - taking his famous naked run across the ice while the bad guys, burdened with what looks to be fifty pounds of seal-skin clothing apiece, stumble along behind him and eventually drop away. At film's end, Atanarjuat returns to the community and in a kind of metaphorical "shoot-out at the OK igloo", he bests the three bad brothers and they, along with their wicked sister, are banished from the community. Atanarjuat and his wife reunite.
It's all too familiar, and even with an overlay of Inuit myth about an evil spirit that afflicts the community, it didn't work for me. The film's dialogue, at least as it is expressed in the subtitles, is mostly banal. Perhaps the actors are saying interesting things in Inuktitut (the Inuit language) but little of that comes through in the mostly one-liners that appear on-screen. It was also very annoying that the director shoe-horned into the film a vaguely "Hollywoodish" sex sequence between Atanarjuat and the wicked sister, complete with the trendy orgasmic bleating that has become all too commonplace in the mostly bad and mediocre films that flood across our screens these days.
Even the celebrated chase sequence across the ice, perhaps the signature moment of the film, fell rather flat for me. Like Atanarjuat's pursuers, I felt it ran out of steam before it was over. Interestingly, it reminded me of the chase sequence in the 1939 John Ford film, "Drums Along The Mohawk", where Henry Fonda is pursued by three Indian warriors - the number "three" has an enduring mythology that transcends many cultures - running for his life across the New York countryside in Revolutionary times. The sequence with Fonda will linger with me for much longer than the one in "Atanarjuat". Well, it has already; I first saw "Drums" decades ago.
The film that comes most readily to mind, though, after seeing "Atanarjuat" is "Himalaya", the 1999 film directed by Eric Valli, who used a cast composed almost entirely of local amateurs. In my opinion, "Himalaya" succeeds where "Atanarjuat" fails, although both were focused on local traditions and conflicts, and both were set in remote non-western locales. "Himalaya", no masterpiece itself but very watchable, is simply a better film.
One of the things that does come through in "Atanarjuat", and very powerfully, is the depiction of a strong and resolute people who live in an environment that places them almost literally on the knife-edge of survival. It is astonishing, on every level, that they do survive and, in a sense, prosper, making full use of the few resources at their disposal. Even here, though, I have a minor quibble: the film appears to be set in prehistoric times, long before the white man entered the picture. Yet, in a number of scenes the Inuit are using implements of iron and steel. One wonders where they could have obtained them.
All of that having been said, I think "Atanarjuat" is an important film. And I don't say this in a condescending way. As many have pointed out on this site, and elsewhere, this is probably the only feature-length Inuit film ever made. Some commentators have suggested that it will likely be the only Inuit film we will ever see. I hope not. Film is important, arguably the most effective way for one culture to communicate with others, and with itself. One hopes that there will be more Inuit feature-length films, building on the few, but genuine, accomplishments of this one.
