Atanarjuat wows local crowds

AARON SPITZER

IQALUIT — Nunavut’s first blockbuster film brought the house down at its Iqaluit debut last weekend.

Atanarjuat — The Fast Runner — contains no gun battles, car chases or computer-animated special effects.

But the first-ever feature-length Inuktitut movie kept a near-capacity crowd laughing, cringing and crying for nearly three hours Sunday night.

Directed by Zacharias Kunuk and produced by Igloolik Isuma Productions Inc., the film retells the well-known Inuit legend of a man whose hunting group is split apart by love, jealousy, violence and supernatural forces.

The film features an all-Iglulingmiut cast — a few with professional acting credits, but many making their on-screen debuts.

Most of the performances are pretty good.

The star of the movie is Natar Ungalaaq, who, as the young, charismatic, fleet-footed Inuk hunter Atanarjuat, is impossible not to like.

Menacing him throughout the movie is the envious, spiteful Oki, played — in a somewhat hammy style — by Peter-Henry Arnatsiaq.

But stealing the show with their acting talent are the two leading ladies: Sylvia Ivalu, and, particularly, Lucy Tulugarjuk.

With subtlety and genuine feeling, Ivalu plays Atuat, Atanarjuat’s kind and demure first wife. Tulugarjuk, on the other hand, cunningly carries off the role of Puja, Oki’s sister, who is Atanarjuat’s impish, simpering, deceitful second wife.

The movie is set in pre-contact times, and the film’s designers went to great lengths to insure that the sets and costumes — right down to the women’s facial tattoos and the men’s snow-goggles — have a look of authenticity about them.

A big star in this movie is the land itself, captured with deft camerawork. Most of the scenes are stark and evocative, shot on the sea-ice, sprawling tundra and rocky flatlands around Igloolik.

The austerity of the landscape underscores the importance of cooperation among the Inuit families, and heightens the horror when violence strikes and sends the hero running for his life across miles of rotting sea-ice.

Judged by Hollywood standards, the film isn’t without its flaws.

Some will criticize the movie for its length and languid pacing, as it follows the Inuit hunters through their annual harvesting cycle.

Some of the action is slapsticky, and some of the humor is juvenile. Plus, a lot of the subtleties of the acting and dialogue are inevitably lost on qallunaat viewers such as myself.

Clearly the translation left a little to be desired. Certain jokes were obviously not transferred into the English subtitles, and, disappointingly, some vulgarities were whitewashed away.

The latter fact is surprising, because for the most part the film pulled no punches. There was sex, gore and lewd humor galore — which many audience members seemed surprised to see in a home-grown film.

Though Atanarjuat has now been shown in both Igloolik and Iqaluit, neither screening is being deemed the film’s “debut.”

That designation is being reserved for when — and if — the movie is picked to appear in one of the world’s major film festivals, such as Cannes, Venice or Sundance.

Atanarjuat cost about $1.96 million to make, said Norman Cohn, the film’s director of photography.

But if it gets accepted into a major festival, the distribution deals it would win could be worth many times that much.

Still, said Cohn, even if Atanarjuat doesn’t make a dime, its value will be immeasurable, based simply on the positive message about Inuit the movie conveys — both to the outside world and to Inuit themselves.

Atanarjuat, he said, “is a proof against stereotypes.”

“Everyone can see this is a groundbreaking event,” he said.