Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2002)

Thanks for the memories!

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

This was a good, surprisingly engrossing film given its long running time and slow pace. I have read some excellent reviews on it and don't know as I can much improve on what's already been said, but I do have one or two comments I'd like to add to the mix. First is regarding the confusing beginning. I was lost for that half hour, but thereafter the film righted itself and the rest was captivating. (Note: Wikipedia has a pretty good plot summary and if you follow along with that while watching the movie, you will get more out of it. The summary is really only necessary for the first and last half hours.)I think the thing that must be reemphasized is that this film is a reenactment of an Inuit legend intended for Inuit audiences. The Inuit already know the legend and do not need the beginning (or any other part of it) to be blatantly laid out. It is similar to our recent movies about Hansel and Gretel and Jack and the Beanstalk. Those two films would be confusing if you had no back story, but due to our culture, most of us are very familiar with the tales. Better parallels could be some of the super-hero films coming out today. We have all known about Kryptonite since grade-school. But if you grew up in an isolated state, the Superman movies would also be pretty confusing. Finally, this film was intended for Inuit audiences. We are really just voyeurs allowed to peek in and experience their world. There was never any intention to compete with Hollywood and this film does not measure up to ALL the Hollywood ideals. But it is a timeless story filmed in a beautiful location with wonderful actors (anyone who says otherwise has no familiarity with northern peoples.). Of any marginally mainstream movie that deals with life in the traditional arctic, ATFR gives the truest representation. It is worth a watch for the great story and to give you a jaw-dropping appreciation for the brutality of that life and the ruggedness of the people who are able to endure it.

The film is spellbinding as storytelling, it also prompts admiration for the Inuit people's patience, resilience and their overriding concern for harmony with the world around them. An Inuit tribesman gets caught up in internecine struggles for power, possession of women and revenge.Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner is a spectacular and strange folkloric epic, driven by basic human impulses that make it remarkably gripping, even over a running time of almost three hours. It's utterly distinctive and original. The film is ranked 47th in the They Shoot Pictures Don't They list of The 21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films.

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.

After realizing the first hour was unnecessarily included in this film, I took a break from the utter boredom and read some reviews here in hopes of finding something that would convince me to watch the next hour. And I found plenty, but mostly from people who were intrigued by the Inuit culture. I had never heard of this culture but I figured what the heck. So I went ahead and watched the next hour, and while the one-at-a-time fight scenes were a bit intriguing, I remained pretty much bored. I understand the culture is a bit savage, but that still didn't hold my attention. It took a while before I found the energy to watch the final hour of this movie. It turned out interesting, but not super interesting.This movie was not meant to be a documentary, but the camera work reminds me of one. I think it would have been better if it were done as a documentary. I see lots of interesting documentaries about strange cultures on the Discovery channel, but this pseudo-doc bored me to sleep several times. They could've used a good editor to prevent spontaneous audience narcolepsy. I've seen better one hour documentaries about a cheetah catching a whatever-it-wants-to-eat dinner.One person who rated this more than 7 stars said "The actors are astonishing, and it must have been so terribly cold up there, that you know this was a labor of love for the production team. The scenery is astonishing."A few other people made similar comments.But the truth is, the acting is border-line. Most of it is similar to cheesy Latino daytime soap operas. The scenery is hardly astonishing; it is mostly a blend of blue sky, snow, and boring small rocks. There is much better scenery in a documentary like "Touch a Void".With some better editing, this film could be re-released, remove the boring stuff, and hit the nail on the head. Kinda like that scene where the two adjuncts hit each other on the head for a challenge.The subtitles could also use a bit of work too. Most of the captions are yellow on a white background. Not very easy to read. And they often linger for a brief moment, not giving you enough time to read them. And there is too much dialogue that doesn't even include captions. This could have been a very good documovie with better editing. Where are the next two thumbs up going to land?