Review
THE SNOW WALKER
Starring Barry Pepper, Annabella Piugattuk and James Cromwell
Directed by Charles Martin Smith
Opens Friday, March 12
Check listings
Newsflash: White men don’t know shit. They are spiritually corrupt and desperately need guidance from much wiser Aboriginal people. At least, this seems to be the moral of most man-versus-nature tales – and The Snow Walker is no exception. The subhuman treatment of an Inuit selling some native art in a bush-pilot watering hole full of ignorant racist pigs draws a clear line between good and bad at the beginning of the film. While the lesson may be predictable, the journey is beautiful.
Set in the ’50s, the story of survival begins when charismatic womanizer Charlie Halliday (Barry Pepper) is bribed to air taxi a sick Inuit, Kanaalaq (Annabella Piugattuk), to a hospital in Yellowknife. Addressing her only by the serial number on her Eskimo dog tags, she is no more human to Halliday than the rest of his cargo. During the flight, he entertains himself by merrily singing commercial jingles as she coughs up blood. But when the plane crashes in the unforgiving Canadian Arctic tundra, Halliday is forced to treat his savage passenger as human. As expected, he fights this inevitability and tries to go it alone, but the man who has a woman stashed in every corner of the map finds himself in foreign territory. Kanaalaq is wise, serene and unaffected by his charms. More importantly, she knows how to stay alive in —50 C winters.
The turning point in their relationship is when he asks what her Inuit name is and a true bond develops, which could have been a perfect place for a Hollywood romance, but director Charles Martin Smith opts for an earnest friendship instead.
Based on Farley Mowat’s short story, Walk Well My Brother, Smith uses extremely wide shots to convey the vastness of the desolate landscape and at the same time the insignificance of Halliday’s former life. In the grand harshness of mother earth, he is just a speck.
Conversely, Smith uses extremely tight shots to bridge the gap between two vastly different cultures. For instance, Halliday realizes the growing tenderness between him and Kanaalaq when the camera zooms in on her lovingly sewing him some new fur boots.
Filmed mostly north of Churchill, Manitoba, the cinematography is beautiful. Stars dance in the blackness of night and snow owls camouflage in the whiteness of an Arctic day. One particular scene of swarming mosquitoes descending down from the darkened skies on an ill-prepared Halliday is spectacular.
Pepper’s portrayal of self-serving bigot morphing into a human being is believable and gradual. Piugattuk is stunning in her role as the patient teacher.
It’s just too bad their on-screen relationship didn’t have more balance. Because of the colour-drawn lines between races, Halliday gains a lifetime worth of wisdom without ever sharing any of his own insight with Kanaalaq. |
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