The Fast Runner (Atanarjuat)
March 2003 Reviewed by: Doug Schneider Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

The Fast Runner (Atanarjuat) might be considered a movie-making miracle. It is an ambitious love story based on an Inuit legend and runs nearly three hours. It stars professional and amateur Inuit actors and the production company is 75% Inuit owned. The cost? A paltry $1.96 million.

The story is simple. Atanarjuat (Natar Ungalaaq), who can run fast and has a brother who is strong, loves Atuat (Sylvia Ivalu), who is neither fast nor strong, but is loyal. Atuat, though, has been promised to Oki (Peter-Henry Arnatsiaq), who is ruthless and evil. It’s a tale of good versus evil and how love conquers all. The story isn’t new, but its setting certainly is.

The film seems authentic, right down to language, which is Inuktitut (don’t worry, there are English subtitles). The timeframe? Dunno. It all takes place in the North, mostly in the snow and ice, and there are no real clues as to "when" it is. But according to the "Art Direction" section on the disc of extra features, the first time the Inuits encountered Europeans was in the 1820s. As a result, the set design and clothing were based on Captain William Edward Perry’s journals of his expedition to Igloolik in 1822. Nothing has been "prettied up" for the big screen.

Many of the scenes were shot in bone-shattering cold weather, and when the actor who plays Atanarjuat takes off on his famous run to escape Oki and his henchmen, he really does it, buck-naked across the snow and ice. And if you do not believe that, just watch the extra features section where he talks about it. It certainly looks painful, and being a Canadian who has seen his share of cold, snowy, icy winters, I can imagine that it was. I certainly would not be out there barefoot, with my privates dangling over the ice, for any amount of money.

All that admiration aside, I can’t say that Atanarjuat is a complete success. This film is long, really long, and it shouldn’t be. Some people I know watched it in one sitting at the theater. I couldn’t do that; it took me three sessions to make it through the DVD. I would wager that it could be cut down to two hours or less and it would be better. It is also confusing. Sometimes I lost track of who was who, and often I couldn’t figure out what they were doing. It was only after I finished the film, went to the second disc, and read a section called "The Legend on the Land" that I was clued in. At that point, though, I wasn’t about to go and watch the three-hour movie again. Instead, I just played it back through my memory to piece it all together. A wise friend of mine went through the extras first and had a far better experience watching it. I recommend that approach. As for the second disc of extras: It is fascinating stuff, and I highly recommend that if you rent or buy this film, you take the time to go through it all.

In order to film in the cold (and undoubtedly to cut costs down), The Fast Runner was shot on high-definition digital video. That’s one of the reasons I watched it; I’m keen to see where this medium will go. The results of the digital photography are good: impressively natural skin tones, good low-light shots, and startling views of the scenery. It’s quite film-like, but the medium’s limitations show through, too. In particular, take note of the scenes shot on the rock-filled beaches. Depth is strangely indistinct and the edges of the rocks look odd. A lack of resolution and the presence of digital artifacts are likely the culprits. The fact that I could detect these faults on the DVD indicates that the image transfer is good.

But while the image is fine, the 5.1 sound mix is awful. I had to turn the volume up and up and still couldn’t hear it well. And while some may think that’s not all that important given the fact that most won’t be able to understand the dialogue anyway, remember that good sound is crucial for the movie-watching experience (and why dubbed movies are almost always inferior to subtitled versions).

The Fast Runner will go down as one of those strange masterpieces recognized not just for the film itself, but for how it got made, too. Hollywood would never go near a project like this, no matter how cheaply they could make it, and that is an unfortunate thing. And although I can’t say that I loved The Fast Runner the way some do, I am more than glad I watched it. The memory of it has stayed with me for a surprisingly long time. It is certainly worth watching for the experience. 

• Go Back