Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner
Director: Zacharias Kunuk
Year Released: 2001
Rating: 0.0
This is my idea of unending torture: three hours of god-awful acting, sluggish pacing and starring a group of nonprofessional Inuit actors. The camerawork is strongly reminiscent of PBS documentaries and amateurish student films (done with digital video); it might have been better had it been a documentary on real Inuit lives and half as long. The exoticism of making a movie in a strange land and (for the first time) in a unique language appears to be the selling point for most critics - the novelty of it has deceived them into thinking it's a momentous achievement in the movies. For me, it goes to show exactly how great the deeply compassionate Nanook of the North really was.
