atanarjuat

[alonewiththemoon]

The Fast Runner is a good movie to watch when it's 90 million degrees out. There is nothing like watching vast panoramas of snow to make the blood feel just a little cooler. I enjoyed the movie quite a bit. The "naive" filmmaking and some of the acting were not always stellar, but the main characters were perfect and the story flowed well, although not necessarily in a linear fashion. I am glad that in my past I taught undergrads Inuit culture and ethnography--I can't imagine how confusing this movie might have been to people who knew nothing about any of it. I think I had just enough background to appreciate a lot of what I was seeing (song duels, name relationships, shamanism, material culture stuff, the ritualized nature of violence) but not so much that I would become too critical about how it was being presented.

It is not a movie for people who object to seeing animals butchered* and eaten raw. I would imagine that no movie about the Inuit would be appropriate for such a person, because animals were pretty much all the Inuit had to eat, back in the day. Pure Atkins.

*in everyday usage, "butchered" has come to imply something rather clumsy and messy, like mad hacking. I don't mean that; I mean the deconstruction of the bodies of seals, birds, etc with surgical precision, or as close to it as one can get with an ulu.

Also, the women's facial tattoos were beautiful. I hope some of them still have them done.

Comments

Appreciation

[sanguineempathy.livejournal.com]

I loved that movie - though I wanted to kill that crying woman :-/! It was really really beautifully filmed. Strange - I don't really remember the animals, probably because I rationalized it as being "ok" in that sort of tribal/cultural setting. Hrm, odd.