Review: Atanarjuat (2001)

Atanarjuat (2001)
Also know as The Fast Runner. George Parker sums it up so well in his imdb review that I'm just going to quote his review almost in its entirety here:

The Fast Runner" is a pedestrian story of treachery among a tribe of primitive natives - in this case the Inuits of the arctic region of Canada. On the upside the film has an abundance of raw Spartan arctic beauty; haunting music and percussion; real native actors speaking what is presumably the Inuit tongue; and a fascinating sense of authenticity. On the downside, the film is viscous, long, esoteric, difficult to follow, and plays better as a documentary with the thin story of murder and deceit among peaceful people being buried under ice and snow as we watch the Inuit's simple day-to-day survival tasks and never see the more interesting activities such as a caribou hunt. In short, the film doesn't work well as either a drama or a documentary though it seems to try to straddle both.

I think I may have enjoyed the movie more than Mr. Parker, but his points are quite valid.