Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2002)

The first movie ever filmed entirely in Inuit has a slightly convoluted plot, focusing on treachery among a group of people in the Arctic. It had the feeling of a Greek tragedy or Shakespeare play, despite taking place in Greenland (or some place similar). "Atanarjuat" - meaning "The Fast Runner" - is most memorable for showing a culture that we don't usually get to see. A few months after I saw it, I went to college, and one of my friends there remembered the same scene that I did: the man running naked across the ice.I should say that the end of the movie broke my concentration when they ran the credits and showed the crew. But for the most part, I found it to be a very impressive film. Definitely one that I recommend.

Here is one for the history books, Atanarjuat is the first Inuit made motion picture. While it looks primitive, there is something truly haunting and almost prehistoric about it. Atanarjuat, takes us into a world that most of us have never truly understood, expect for the illustrations on ice cream 'eskimo' bars. Visually, Atanarjuat could be considered a mirror to Kurosawa, but in terms of plot coherency, the film is not so strong. The only part which is strait forward is that we know who the hero is and what some of his character motives are. Aside from that, the plot of Atanarjuat, is very loose, unfocused, and features too many characters which from a non-Inuit perspective, all look and dress alike. This makes things confusing for the first half hour, until we start to recognize who different people are. What I like about the story is the cultural anthropology lesson I get from it. It's educational. Every now and then comes a scene of little importance to the plot but shows us something neat. For example, the methods used to design drums, tenderize meat, and kindle fire, are something I haven't seen specifically in any other movie. The music is also something worth noting, very strange very beautiful and hard to place. Sometimes, the score sounds like a mix of Buddist chanting, Australia digeridoo, and African drums.If you can handle a slow movie, Atanarjuat is a film to see, although I can't say I loved it. Not emotionally captivating, but intellectually intriguing.

"The Fast Runner" is sometimes beautiful to look at, and in its immediacy it is at times able to transport the viewer to another time and place.But this is a bad film. In terms of storytelling, editing and narrative, it just doesn't make any sense. I found myself taken out of the film as much as I was immersed in it due to the poor film-making techniques.I'm sure that there are some people who were generally moved by this film, and it has a few very compelling moments. But as a film overall, I can't imagine how it gets such universal acclaim, especially considering its sub-AV Club technique. (I hate to call anyone's motives into question, but I tend to think that more than a few people who heap praise upon this film are doing so out of a need to praise this plucky group of Inuits for making a film at all. I think it's less condescending to evaluate it out of context.)

Atanarjuat is a beautiful film. To capture images in the ice, with so much light reflecting all over can be complicated, but Atanarjuat is a movie where this becomes an art. Against the white bright snow landscape people become really significant. It's amazing how we people can live in such a place. Atanarjuat came to the little village (3,500 inhabitants) where I live, in Alentejo, Portugal, about 3 years ago, but I'll never forget it. This film expanded my perception on how we can be human in so many different ways and in so many different places. The cold, the white, the snow and the light make a wonderful dream. The most incredible for me is how the people who made the movie were able to show the amazing diversity of beauty in what could be said a rather monotonous landscape. The story is so rooted in it and so universally human, at the same time, that this film is for all of us.