Growing up Canadian, one learns to be wary of the often imitative homegrown films, that fill content quotas and occasionally creeps into cinemas. There are exceptions, most notably the world-famous directors who find berths at prestigious competitive festivals, but Canadian cinema — Anglophone more so than Francophone — struggles to escape the “CanCon” stigma. That conditioned skepticism inevitably rears its head when surveying the Toronto International Film Festival program which, justifiably enough, must also serve as a global stage for Canuck cinema.
Two Canadian films have been selected to be part of the juried Platform strand, with an eye to broadening the definition of Canadian film in the international lexicon: the French New Wave-inspired Québécois feature “Those Who Make Revolution Halfway Only Dig Their Own Graves” and, by celebrated Inuk filmmaker Zacharius Kunuk (“Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner“), “Maliglutit” (in English, “Searchers”). The latter of these two films, sold as indigenous riff on John Ford’s 1956 classic, is a riveting “northern” and destined to become a staple of Canadian cinema.
Kunuk and co-director Natar Ungalaaq simplify and relocate the iconic narrative of “The Searchers,” in which John Wayne hunts down the Comanches who kidnapped his niece (Natalie Wood). In this rendition, Kuanana (Benjamin Kunuk) lives a hard life on the Arctic tundra with his family, with his wife Ailla (Jocelyne Immaroitok), daughter Aulla (Jonah Qunaq) and his son Siku (Joseph Uttak). Food is scarce and when Kuanana and Siku leave to kill a caribou for sustenance, four men smash into the family’s igloo, killing the grandparents and kidnapping Ailla and Aulla to claim them as wives. Discovering his home destroyed and the bodies of his parents, Kuanana sets off to rescue his wife and daughter and harm the men responsible.
The most immediate impression as “Maliglutit” opens is its authenticity, the feature marked by a rigorous set of filmmaking parameters that makes the recent Northern-set Canadian film “Two Lovers and a Bear” look luxurious by comparison. A period movie according to the production notes (set in Nunavut circa 1913), Kunuk’s film appears to be shot outside of time and has no obligation to contextualize the revenge story vis-a-vis interactions with European colonizers. In the first act leading up to the kidnapping, we see the various characters performing their daily rituals in long takes—attending community meetings, preparing food, hacking frozen fish, even Kuanana’s father undressing from the thick layers of hide that protect the Inuit from the harsh conditions. Kunuk resurrects a traditional way of life through filmmaking, with “Maliglutit” deploying long takes and a static camera as the necessary means to foreground such routines. The sequences shot within igloos—of which there are many—impress with their intimacy and use of existing light.
With that said, “Maliglutit” is by no means exclusively ethnographic, and the hunt for the kidnappers is as thrilling as one could hope (with Ford having already set a very lofty precedent). If the stakes weren’t personal enough, Kuanana is limited to three bullets to hunt his prey (initially, the caribou, after which he has two). Not only does this detail set up the hero as a consummate badass in the vein of Ethan Edwards and narrow his options, it is suggested that the decision to use bullets will further complicate Kuanana’s ability to hunt and provide for his family afterward—that is, if he can save them. The film’s chase scenes are riveting, with the camera situated at the rear of the sled in motion, driven by dogs towards the protagonist’s quarry. Cinematographer Jonathan Frantz varies the staging of the climactic showdown, later hiding figures in extreme long shots and drawing attention to the scope of the landscape versus the personal action. Additional credit must be given to the score by Inuk throat singer Tanya Taqag and composer Chris Crilly, whose compositions play over the film’s most bracing sequences.
The audience can relate to the kidnappers’ desperation (an early scene establishes them at the margins of the Inuit community) but their relative moral blackness makes for a more satisfying genre picture. The women aren’t helpless and make multiple attempts to escape; a rape scene late in the film is, to a degree, unnecessary, but remains appropriately framed as an act of sexual violence and doesn’t come across as exploitive. There is never a question of the “hug her or kill her” moment that famously finishes “The Searchers,” an iconic instance that at best makes the Ford film about racism rather than racist. In this regard, “Maliglutit” can be seen as a noble correction of the canonical western without sacrificing its genre substance.
Before the screening, the soft-spoken Zacharius Kunuk reiterated that “Maliglutit” is a version of “The Searchers” made with actors from his community, a modest and direct statement that doesn’t quite do justice to the nuance and surety of his directorial hand. With the exception of the final line of the film, a voiceover informing the audience to never give up when faced with hardship, “Maliglutit” never puts a foot wrong. Kunuk’s filmmaking is consistently impressive. He has organized around himself the ideal artisans to imagine this tale of revenge set against the Arctic wasteland — to urban eyes, a miraculous achievement. Moreover, he affords his audience a thrilling Inuk western, recreating frontier hardships with a sensitivity to the racial and colonial implications of the established western, Canadian and broader cinematic canons. [A-]
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