We have seen a number of interesting films at International Film Night this year. Atanarjuat is a Canadian film. It is filmed entirely in Inuktitat, the language of the Eastern Canadian Inuit, was made in 2001, and is directed by Zacharias Kunuk. It was the first indigenous Inuit film to be produced.

It retells an Inuit legend about two brothers, Amaqjuaq, the strong one, and Atanarjuat, the fast one. At the beginning of the film they are infants. In the opening scenes, at a gathering of the clan, in the presence of a baleful shaman, Kumaglak the clan leader dies and Sauri his son is appointed the new leader. The clear implication is that Sauri has plotted his father’s murder and Tulimaq, the infant’s father, is now under threat, as is Qulitalik, the brother of Kumaglik’s wife Panikpak, who flees the clan

The film then picks them up as young men. Atarnajuat is now a rival of Oki, the son of Sauri, in a duel for Atuat, who was betrothed to Oki as a child. Atarnajuat wins the fight, a formalised contest where they alternately punch each other on the head. Though now married to Atuat, on a hunting trip Atarnajuat stops by Sauri’s camp, where he is persuaded to allow Puja, Oki’s sister, to join him on the trip. Atarnajuat is seduced by Puja thereby acquiring a second wife.

Sometime later, back with his family, Puja joins Amaqjuaq under the animal skin rugs. Atarnajuat strikes her and she returns to Sauri’s camp. The attack provokes Oki further and he and his gang attack the tent where the brothers are sleeping. Amaqjuaq is killed but Atarnajuat escapes and flees naked across the ice. Oki gives chase, but cannot catch the fast runner and has to turn back to collect his sled. Meanwhile, Atarnajuat gets help from a family living out on the ice. It turns out that this is Qulitalik. In his care, Atarnajuat recovers and guided by Qulitalik finds the right time to return to confront Oki who has, in his absence, raped Atuat and killed Sauri to make himself leader.

Atarnajuat returns. Oki is held under a spell after catching and eating a rabbit, and forgets their enmity. Atarnajuat is able to build an igloo with a highly polished ice floor, to which he invites Oki and his gang. He steps out to pick up a weapon and, properly shod in ice gripping shoes, overpowers Oki and his supporters who cannot maintain a footing on the polished surface. But he spares Oki’s life, saying that the killing must stop. In the evening the clan gathers again. The shaman is summoned, confronted and expelled by Qulitalik and Panikpak. Panikpak announces that Oki and his friends and Puja are expelled from the clan.

The story is believed to be over five hundred years old, and in the original it is a story of a revenge killing, not one about the necessity of forgiveness to escape the cycle of wrongdoing.

The film is absorbing and the 170 minute running time doesn’t drag. But the film is not without difficulties. One problem may be guessed from the brief synopsis of the story above. The story is part of Inuit oral tradition and shamanism is part of the framework of Inuit culture, so the basic elements of the story and their interpretation will be familiar to Inuit audiences. However, because unfamiliar, I found it difficult to follow the opening sequence, a difficulty compounded by the leap in time which immediately follows, and the closing scenes make much more sense if the opening scenes have been understood. I don’t usually like to read up about a film before watching it, but in this case, some familiarity with the story and the background would probably have been helpful. Although set in the distant past at a time when the Inuit had a fairly rudimentary technology, they did, it seems, wear very stylish sun-reflecting shades.

 

Ostrov, The Island, is a Russian film directed by Pavel Lungin, about Anatoly, a monk in the Orthodox Church. During the war, Anatoly was a sailor on board a barge transporting coal commanded by Tikhon, when they are captured by a Nazi boat. The Nazi captain offers Anatoly the chance to run if he will shoot Tikhon. He appears to take the offer, though there is some ambiguity about his degree of volition.

He is washed up on the shore and taken in by the monks at an isolated monastery. Thirty years later he is the stoker at the monastery, keeping the boilers which heat the monastery buildings burning. He has some healing gifts, but he is tormented by his own wrongdoing, which he cannot heal. He continually repeats the prayer “Lord Jesus Christ Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner”. The people he helps are rarely happy with what he has done for them. His renown has spread however, and an important admiral comes to the monastery with his daughter, who appears to be possessed. Anatoly is able to help her. It turns out that the admiral is Tikhon, who was only wounded when he was shot, and who is now able to forgive Anatoly, who is now able to die.

The film is comparatively short at less than 112 minutes and was filmed on the shores of the White Sea in Karelia. It was shown at the 2006 Venice Film Festival. Although this film is easier to follow than Atarnajuat, it is harder to interpret. This is also a story which resolves itself through an act of forgiveness, though with a different meaning. Tikhon’s forgiveness cannot be a requirement for Anatoly’s atonement, since he might have died, or might not have been willing to forgive the offence. But it is a signal to Anatoly that his search for healing is completed, and that the path the original shooting moved him onto is completed. At least, that’s how I interpret it.

 

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is a literal translation into English of the Turkish Bir Zamanlar Anadolu’da and the reference is intended to Sergio Leone’s film Once Upon a Time in the West. It is directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan and was co-winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2011. There is almost nothing of a plot. For the first 90 minutes we follow a small party in three vehicles as they traverse the hills of Anatolia trying to locate the grave of a murdered man. The party is composed of the police chief Naci and his men, two diggers, a doctor, a prosecutor, two soldiers, and the suspects Kenan and his brother. At the beginning of the film we have briefly seen the suspects drinking with a third man Yasar. Kenan cannot remember where the dead man was dumped, except that it was near a water fountain and a tree, but there are many water fountains and many trees, and they all look the same in the dark.

Towards the end of the night they stop at the home of a local official for something to eat, were they are served by the man’s beautiful daughter. To the men, her appearance provokes sudden attention. During the break, something is learnt from Kenan about the reason for the murder and soon afterwards the body is located.

In the following 60 minutes, day breaks and the body is taken to the local town for an autopsy. Kenan is barracked by the local crowd and spat at by the murdered man’s son. The boy’s mother identifies the body of her husband. The doctor then starts to perform the autopsy. It seems there is mud in the murdered man’s lungs, indicating that he was still alive when he was buried. Although throughout there has been an emphasis on correct procedure, the doctor chooses not to record this fact in the official record.

During the night, Naci and the policeman have spoken the most and the doctor and the prosecutor have been largely silent. In the daylight the doctor and the prosecutor become more the focus. They have discussed the case of a woman who correctly foretold that her own death would come shortly after she gave birth. It seems that the prosecutor is talking about his own wife: did she commit suicide to punish him? The doctor himself is recently divorced. It seems that Kenan is the father of the boy, and it was the dispute that followed the accidental revelation of this to Yasar that led to his death.

The film does not move at the pace of narrative, it moves at the pace of real time events. The conversations are often conversations about nothing, or about yoghurt. After 150 minutes the film ends, somewhat abruptly, as the doctor watches from a window as the boy retrieves a football, but for no obvious reason, except that films have to end sometime.

I don’t know how important the story really is to the film. If the moment of revelation about the Kenan’s fatherhood is actually in the film, I missed it. This is possible. Someone else had seen the film 3 times and not picked up on this point either. If I had read the synopsis before hand, I would know this, but that would be to know from the start something which the film only reveals after 90 minutes, if indeed it is revealed at all. In this case, as in most cases, I think it is better not to have researched a film beforehand.

The narrative is not punctuated in the way film narratives are conventionally punctuated. There is no soundtrack. The significance of any conversation is in doubt: only the story about the wife who foretold her own death is returned to, so, if repetition signals salience, this is important. There are few women in the film, the silent and beautiful daughter, Yasar’s wife, and a few other women briefly glimpsed through doorways. None speaks anything significant. But it becomes clear that behind the sequence of events in the police investigation, the texture, the weight of the film, is in the unsuccessful relationships between the talkative men and the silent women.

 

Lars von Trier’s film Melancholia was premiered at Cannes in 2011. During the press conference von Trier starting making some comments about Hitler and the Nazis which he couldn’t find a way out of and was declared persona non grata by the festival. It had apparently something to do with the Danish sense of humour which had got lost in translation.

The film concerns two sisters, Justine, and Claire, and is split into two parts. The first covers Justine’s wedding day, which doesn’t go well, and the second covers the end of the world. The musical soundtrack is taken from Wagner’s prelude to Tristan and Isolde, and the film opens with a sequence of images that function as leitmotifs. This film prelude ends with the earth colliding with the massive wayward planet Melancholia and disintegrating. We know before we begin how it is going to end.

Typically, the scenario in collision movies is that the earth is struck by a much smaller asteroid, leading to mass destruction but leaving room for an aftermath and some possibility of a future. In this film the earth is the asteroid and there is no hope and no escape.

Von Trier suffers from periods of depression and the germ of the film was apparently an insight into the fact that sufferers from depression will typically be able to remain calm in traumatic situations, calmer than the well-integrated. In the first part of the film, Justine’s wedding day disintegrates. She drifts away from the reception. Her father leaves after she asks him to stay, her mother insults her, and she rebuffs her groom, seduces an intern and loses her job by insulting her employer. Her parents and her employer are pretty ghastly people, but I suppose coping with dreadful people is part of coping with the world.

In the second part, Justine returns to her sister’s home, now almost ceasing to function. This part of the film is concerned with the approach of the wayward planet. It is expected to fly past, and that is what happens. But we have seen a projected path that Claire has found on the internet which shows the planet circling back. And in fact it does. In the face of the extinction of hope, Claire now crumbles and becomes distressed, while Justine remains calm, comforts Claire’s son, and organises the construction of a magic cave, a wigwam of slender sticks. They retreat to sit in this absurdly fragile sanctuary to await the end of the world.

The film’s success I think is to keep its balance. The psychological event is never allowed to collapse into a real event, and the real event is never allowed to collapse into a metaphor.