Lavish Imax caribou movie is full of holes

MONTREAL — While Imax movies usually generate a torrent of breathtaking and memorable images, “The Great North” leaves only a lot of questions in its wake.

The 40-minute movie premiered last week in Montreal, in English and French, to an audience that included many Nunavimmiut.

Many were left wondering whether it’s worth their while to pay $12 to see the movie, and whether it was worth the $6 million it cost to make.

They also wondered why Inuit were portrayed like objects instead of real people living in the 21st century.

“The Great North” was originally supposed to be a movie about the one million caribou that roam Nunavik. This story of the noble “Tuktu” was to be called “The Symbol of the North.”

But, in the end, the scope of the final production became both more, and less, than its original concept.

Director-producer Martin Dignard said the focus of the film changed because Nunavik’s gregarious caribou just couldn’t carry the film alone.

“They’re sexy in groups, but apart from that, alone, they run, they feed and they snort,” Dignard said.

So, after the Swedish Museum of Natural History threw in some money, a decision was made to broaden the film’s focus to include reindeer and Sami reindeer herders.

Dignard defended this change, saying it didn’t mean the film ended up “a pi a” of diverse elements.

But ticket-buyers may feel this is exactly what they got in exchange for the 12 bucks they paid to see it.

At least for the film’s first 20 minutes, they’ll find the film flows smoothly. During these sequences, “The Great North” sticks to its original focus — caribou — with some awesome footage of caribou streaming through the Torngat Mountains, and even the complete birth of a calf.

These scenes produce the breathtaking sights and sounds that an Imax movie is expected to deliver on its huge screen.

To produce these spectacular visual effects, the Imax film crew relies on unique cameras that shoot larger and faster film. In “The Great North,” this technique makes for some rivetting scenes of caribou migrating, swimming or simply foraging for food.

It means that when the movie sticks to caribou, it’s good, but when the focus jumps between caribou and reindeer, Inuit and Sami, Quebec and Sweden, it becomes confusing.

Some of the film’s best content, however, comes from Sweden. There it manages to move beyond visually pleasing shots to authentic views of Sami life.

The scenes from northern Sweden show the Sami people’s past and present, with its reindeer herds, and enduring culture, which includes the traditional Sami song, the “joik.”

These segments’ filming involved the collaboration of Sami herder and documentary filmmaker John E. Uutsi. His eyes are behind these glimpses of Sami life, in which Sami herder and master joiker Apumut Kuolojuk effectively stands out as a link between old and new ways.

Not so for the portrayals of Inuit in Nunavik, who are portrayed as quaint and strangely quiet.

Nunavimmiut at last week’s premiere were not overly enthused by the movie’s images of Inuit, which compare footage of Nanook of the North from Robert Flaherty’s 1922 documentary with shots of his grandson, Adamie Inukpuk, who works for the Kativik School Board in Montreal.

Inukpuk is an experienced actor who appeared in Shadow of the Wolf and Kabloonak, but he can’t rise above the material he’s given in “The Great North.”

One scene stands out in particular: it’s a song-fest held in an igloo where everyone is dressed up in sparklingly clean white parkas and decked out in their best furs.

The stage-set effect recalls old Western movies where no one is ever dusty, said one critic from Nunavik.

In comparsion, the Sami are shown eating a traditional meal of reindeer meat and cheese in a “lavvu” tent, and everyone looks authentically hungry and grimy. They’re dressed, as Sami usually are, in modern clothing with several traditional touches.

The segments on Inuit also go astray because they don’t make any link between today’s lifestyle and caribou.

The movie never shows how caribou remain important in Inuit life: from the food the caribou provide to the furs worn as clothing or to the bone used for jewelry and carvings, not to mention the

commerical caribou sports hunt that brings southern hunters to Nunavik every fall.

Instead, the film focuses on a mish-mash of photogenic, unrelated, and less-practiced activities, such as mussel-picking under the ice and igloo-building. No one is seen actually killing or eating a caribou.

“The problem is they didn’t look at things though Inuit eyes, but as Qallunaat,” said one woman.

If an Inuk filmmaker such as Zach Kunuk, who manages to make re-creations of traditional Inuit life look real, had been involved, the results could have been a lot diffferent.

Instead, “The Great North” shows an outsider’s approach to Quebec’s “Grand Nord,” with lots of sweeping empty landscapes, caribou and little else.

Then, there’s the sound track. Despite some Inuit voices, the narration has a distinctly mainstream “CBC” feel to it. Not surprisingly, because Shelagh Rogers, host of the national CBC show “This Morning,” did the voice-over for the English-language version.

The press material alleges that the background music is a “contemporary world-beat soundtrack.”

But apart from a song by Susan Aglukark, it’s mainly a pillage of traditional Sami music, which is heard even in sequences that focus on Inuit.

Granted, this film wasn’t easy or cheap to make. Imax cameras are heavy, weighing about 45 kilograms, and need three people to operate. The weight was a disadvantage in filming caribou, because the crew had to position itself in one place and couldn’t chase after the animals.

As well, Imax cameras may only shoot three minutes of film at a time. This meant five tons of equipment, including one ton of film, had to be transported around Nunavik by plane, helicopter and snowmobile. Three hundred barrels of fuel were flown in for helicopters, too.

In addition to these logistical challenges, the film crew had trouble even finding caribou. At one point, Quebec government caribou biologist Serge Couturier received a desperate call from the producer, Dignard. He wanted Couturier to come to Nunavik to help the film crew find a large migrating herd of caribou for the film.

Those who’ve never seen the North seem nonetheless impressed by “The Great North.”

The French-language Montreal daily, La Presse, called “Le Grand Nord” a “masterpiece of cinematography,” and the film recently carried off a prestigious Imax award in France.

“The Great North” is being shown in English and French in Montreal. Spanish, Swedish, and Japanese versions are also making the rounds of Imax theatres worldwide.

There’s even a web site with a tedious story about the film’s production, as well as a teacher’s guide, at www.great-north.com.

The film’s many sponsors include Hydro-Quebec, Falconbridge Ltd., Tourisme Quebec, First Air, and Nunavik Tourism.