Arctic
epic
Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner), dir. Zacharias Kunuk. This
much-awarded film is an astonishing achievement for a first-time director.
Using Inuit myth, it covers the territory of all great epic and saga.
The story centres on Atanarjuat of the film's title, the 'fast runner',
but the concerns stretch to far more than individual struggle. Society
must be healthy if people are to be happy; vengeance must stop somewhere;
evil must be dealt with, but not in such a way as to make the good people
evil too. Atanarjuat and his older brother Amaqjuaq are marginalised because
of power struggles in their father's generation. Their talents and hunting
skills cause Oki, the group-leader's son, to become violently jealous.
Then Atanarjuat wins the beautiful Atuat from Oki in a brutal traditional
head-punching contest. After a series of intrigues and betrayals, Oki
and his cronies murder Amaqjuaq as he sleeps in a tent with his younger
brother. Atanarjuat escapes naked across the melting snow and ice fields,
finding help in extremis.
The
cinematography is beyond beauty: vast Arctic skies and snowfields. The
sound includes chants, growls, howls and the crisp crunch of underfoot
snow. The acting is utterly convincing, with Peter-Henry Arnatsiaq and
Lucy Tulugarjuk particularly compelling as Oki and his spoilt, conniving
sister Puja. And you wonder how Natar Ungalaaq as Atanarjuat (right) managed
his naked run on that snow, falling into ice-pools as he went. As film,
as epic, as redemption-wisdom, it all works wonderfully. And despite going
for nearly three hours, it was none too long. If this page gave stars,
I'd be giving it six out of five.
—Juliette Hughes
Casualised casualties
The Navigators, dir. Ken Loach. Loach, in his unobtrusive, startling
way, follows a chrome-yellow-clad gang of rail-track workers (the navvies
of another age) as they negotiate the Third-Way world of modern British
industry. We meet them first as a sparky unionised team, inheritors of
a working-class culture and a few health and safety standards. They become
casualised units of a privatised railway infrastructure before our eyes.
And we are forced to watch, like accomplices, as more than their Yorkshire
wit and camaraderie wears away.
It's a subtle, devastating film. These are not working-class heroes, battling
to a brass-band accompaniment. They are ordinary men with conflicting
demands and loyalties. They have kids, estranged wives, rent to find.
They go ice skating (the film's best scene—Cartier-Bresson in waltz
time). They live in cramped houses where making love to your wife is awkward
because your mate is dossed down on the couch and the walls quiver. They
console one another with communal rituals (bulk chip orders) and they
betray one another out of desperation and fear.
Some of the ensemble cast are professional comedians, hence the machine-gun
pace. The script, by one-time British Rail worker, Rob Dawber (now dead
of mesothelioma contracted on the job), is a class insider's piece of
work—hilarious and tragic.
—Morag Fraser
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