muninnhuginn | We May Never Feel Warm Again

['cos, "Epic Eskimo" would've sounded too crass]

Nanook of the North it wasn't. Thankfully.

BBC4's international film on Saturday night was Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner. Unmissable. Fascinating, moving, universal, but in some of its details almost incomprehensible. Apart from the necessary subtitles, there were no apparent concessions to an audience not au fait with Inuit myth, custom and lifestyle. Played out against a backdrop of white snow and the expanse of pale blue sky and pale yellow sunsets, with almost nothing (white dogs, people wearing whitish skins, bone implements, grey rocks when the ice melts, grey waters), only the faces and the tiniest details, specks of light or colour, to disturb the monotony. Except it wasn't monotonous: each sky looked a little different as we moved through the story. Each face, whether, in the case of the men, unadorned except for snow goggles or, in the case of the women, subtly tattooed, became a focus. Each possession (in a culture with so few material goods), whether clothing (did the differences in design of hoods in the men relate to their family or their individual sprit animal (don't spirit animals form part of Inuit custom?)?), or the lack of or number of dogs, or the chief's bone necklace, or the totemic rabbit's foot had a greater significance in that empty landscape.

For a story involving those epic staples of sexual passion, jealously, hatred and revenge, its apparent restraint was impressive. The "duel" was bloodless, though none the less risky and violent within a ritual, rule bound, framework, the murders were shown with little gore, no unnecessary additional details: the bloodied point of a spear, a knife protruding from an immobile chest.

The success of the film was in conveying the story across a cultural (was going to say "divide") gulf as big as any we might encounter in our ever homogonising world. Patterns of behaviour, what was accepted or taboo, were shown in an appropriate context (tho' it's conceivable that the nakedness and the many adults sharing one tent might provoke (embarrassed) giggles from some). The public giving of new, finer, clothing to Atuat, her shabby garment having been removed by the simple expedient of slitting it down the front (almost like a pupa splitting--tho' that's an oddly inapposite image for the Arctic setting) followed immediately by the humiliation of Puja by the a repetition of the destruction of the old clothing without the donation of new had a tremendous impact. The social obligations of sharing, or not sharing, food was fascinating. In each of these cases, the resonance went beyond the practical--torn clothing and no food have a greater practical impact when you possess very little and inhabit a harsh environment--into a culture we saw only part of.

And what we didn't see: hunting, death rituals (what did happen to Amaqjuak's corpse, let alone his widow?), how the tattoos were applied. Animals, apart from the huskies, were almost non-existent except to serve the story. But these are the anthropological details, not the meat of the story. In some ways, it was very domestic with the women always busy with the scraping of skins or pounding of meat. But the events were both of the household and family, who marries whom, what happens when people are unfaithful, the annoyance of someone not pulling their weight around the camp, the petty humiliations inflicted by the powerful, and these of the greatest myths. This story stands rightly amongst any of the most powerful legends. The film is one of the best we've ever seen.

Maybe it's time to read David Zindell's Neverness and its sequels again.