Directed by Norman Cohn, Zacharias Kunuk
Starring Leah Angutimarik, Pakak Innukshuk, Natar Ungalaq, Samuelie Ammaq, Peter Henry Arnatsiaq, Abraham Ulayuruluk, Jens Jørn Spottag, Kim Bodnia, Jakob Cedergren
Genre: Drama
Country: Canada / Denmark
Runtime: 112 minutes
MPAA Rating: Rated PG for nudity

Evaluation: 9/10
by Greg Ferguson








"It's sad to imagine how many cultures Christianity has actually destroyed." So remarked my sister after we walked out from the theatre on opening night in Moncton, cutting to the core of The Journals Of Knud Rasmussen, an often (and possibly intentionally) scattershot yet warmly effluent essay at preserving the bygone traditions and way of life belonging to the Inuit people of Northern Canada at a time when the influence of the White Man was making its first significant impact on them. Set in 1922 during Greenlandic explorer and scientist Rasmussen's famed travels, it was also a time of pronounced vulnerability and self-doubt for the small smattering of people encountered by him, whose titular journals recorded their lifestyle through a lens that was sympathetic but ultimately limited by a degree of cultural impenetrability that has gone on to hinder and distort much of our popular perception. (You may recall that this was the year Robert J. Flaherty pioneered the documentary film format with his partially fabricated exposé on "Eskimos," Nanook Of The North.) With The Journals Of Knud Rasmussen, though, filmmakers Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn reassemble the Inuit people's history and retell it in their voice with an aspiration toward authenticity. Watching it, there is a sense that at last we have the complementing story to those famous documents, with a richer understanding of what it was really like before their aboriginal innocence was lost to an uneasy union with 20th Century progress.

As the film opens, we see a roomful of men, women, and children bustle about, some moving hurriedly across the floor stopping to sit motionless. They are preparing to pose for a photograph not unlike those glimpsed by people in lands afar, many of whom never had - or cared to have - any other representation. Immediately, it becomes apparent that this is a film about the lives behind the static images and texts; the family bonds, spirituality, elations, tensions, anxieties, and every other shade of humanity they possessed.

A female narrator, Apak (Leah Angutimarik), suddenly begins to reminisce about her past before she and the filmmakers shift us forward ten years where we are hurtled into a surreal state of blinding light, incongruous noises, and the translucent visage of a woman writhing in spiritual coitus combine, conveying a feeling of rapturous pleasure and frightening danger. The overall effect is a disquieting one, and once we learn just what we were seeing, its disturbingly sad nature sets the tone for the rest of the film ahead. Shamanism, spirituality, and the other pleasures of the present are slowly shrinking into memories of the past, and the future seems to bear little hope for joy in its bleak infinitude despite the novelty that the White Man and Christianity bring to the North.

Because of scenes like this, however, I found much of the film at first to be an incomprehensible series of events set adrift in the snow-swept tundra. Apak's status as raconteuse wavers as other characters come into focus - namely, Rasmussen and his men and Apak's father, Avva (Pakak Innuksuk) - and even when it's clear what's going on, it's still difficult to surmise what's propelling the scenes as there is sporadic cohesiveness between them and many times when subtitles are not offered. When it was over I was underwhelmed, struggling to find an element of the film which had compelled me, but as I revisited it in thought afterward I grew fonder its sights, its message, its approach, and the love and care Kunuk, Cohn, and the rest of the crew put into the production. As founders of Isuma, the independent Inuit production company responsible for their wildly successful and deeply effective feature debut, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, Kunuk and Cohn have devoted themselves to fixing a place for their culture in today's film and television, employing largely Inuit crews and insisting on the use of their Inuktitut language. Together they represent a new and important aspect of Canadian culture and, with this film, may be poised to strengthen its foothold on the world cinema scene.

While it remains somewhat problematic and diffuse in areas, The Journals Of Knud Rasmussen is still a captivating immersion into a part of history uncommonly discussed. Instead of a straightforward story peppered by Big Dramatic Moments (though there are some, and they weigh heavily), it is a collection of memories without the edges pencilled in, strung together by a sentiment of rueful loss. Happily, Kunuk and Cohn, visual curators that they are, have committed themselves to regaining whatever they can.

(The Journals Of Knud Rasmussen is playing at Crystal Palace 8 Cinemas, located at 499 Paul St., Dieppe.)