because you can't have too much entertainment... July 2002

Blood is Thicker Than Mud
L
Reviewed:
Late Marriage Directed by: Dover Kosashvili
The Fast Runner (Atanjurat) Directed By: Zacharias Kunuk

Late Marriage
Though Zaza or 'Dooby' as his girlfriend calls him, is a grown man who everyone treats like a boy, they're angry that he doesn't grow up. His family is maddened by his indifference to the bridal candidates they present to him. At the age of 31 his bachelor status has gone from embarassment to mini-scandal. Zaza himself is nonplused at their frustration. He has his own reasons. As we soon discover, Zaza's divorcee girlfriend is angry that he won't come clean about their relationship. Eventually, as is always the case, the truth will find a way out into the open. Zaza loves his girlfriend but he knows that his family won't approve. And how conditional exactly, is his family's love?

That's the narrative premise in a nutshell -but the film is far more than a soap opera. The opening sequence clues you in to the film's subversive stance. It starts almost sitcom-like with an argument between a long-married couple in the bathroom. She is shampooing his hair, he is annoying her with too many demands. But instead of easy laughs you begin to suspect that there is no "cleansing laugh" (sitcom parlance for mean jokes that never hurt the characters) on its way. Their bond is purely legal, familial, and time bound. The years have all but eroded any life they once had beyond their unhappy union. The humor has bite and sting and flies fast and furious indicating the film's abrasive truth telling intent.

The film's turning point and centerpiece (and not coincidentally the chief American selling point) is its unusually graphic and realistic sex scene. What's marvelous about the scene is how it functions as an intuitive part of the narrative. It goes on forever. In fact, it's basically the second act of a three act film. But in place of exposition and standard plot developments, you get revelatory sex. (A lovely tradeoff that more films should make) The details of their relationship become clearer and clearer. He loves her far more than he realizes. She knows how much she loves him and is frightened of the implications. They're both aware of how messy their love is -and how impossible it seems to substantiate in any way.

After this terrific sequence (sure to be one of the year's highlights), all hell breaks looks with his family. (Something had to happen. It is a movie after all). The film, in its own quite remarkably observational way, gradually transforms from an often brutal comedy into a domestic horror film. Not for this story, the quiet longsuffering lived-in love of family. Here in Dhover Kalik's revelation of an Israeli film, family is not only about the ties that bind. These ties also gag and strangle. The blood that flows here is not a life sustaining crimson river but a coagulating and congealing viral sort. Family is something like a straitjacket and blood something like poison.

The film is deeply troubling and not just because we're used to family being treated in a far more conventionally positive fashion. In most films a family unit, no matter how violent or dysfunctional it may be, is still in the end revealed as a beautiful thing. Late Marriage is savage, incisive, and altogether daring, and serves up something like the opposite. Even its elusive conclusion, which brings on a surprising number of contradictory responses in audiences (just read some reviews to get a sense of this), can be interpreted as an anti-family screed. This remarkable film is certain to resonate with anyone who has had a troubled, stifling, or confusing relationship with their families. It won't be easy to shake.

The Fast Runner (Atanarjuat)

Overheard while exiting the screening:
"Well, that's one more culture I can cross off my list."
-Unidentified Elderly Woman.

Much of the hype swirling around this new picture, the Canadian submission for foreign film at last year's Oscars, is due to its simple status as the first ever Inuit language feature film. Sweetening the P.R. deal is the fact that almost all the principal players and behind the scenes folks are also Inuit (the gifted cinematographer is apparently the primary exception). The director, Zacharius Kunuk, had previously made documentaries and much of the film feels informed by that genre of filmmaking. For much of its running time, The Fast Runner (Atanarjuat) seems to unfold rather than be told. That choice sets the film apart and renders it more authentic than your average exotic indie but also impairs it dramatically a bit.

Though the film is consistently engrossing it only really takes flight in the title sequence. Atanarjuat, after nearly evading a grisly murder, takes off naked across the ice of the Arctic with his enemies in swift, armed, and clothed pursuit. The deck, as they say, is stacked against him. Director Zacharias Kunuk, for all his careful and leisurely pacing, knows how to drive an image home. The sequence is an instant classic chase and it's worth the price of admission alone.

The rest of the film doesn't reach as high, but it is still (especially considering its length) an involving mythical yarn about good and evil. You can see it for its full bodied morality tale, for its gorgeous and blinding shades of white. Or you can travel to the theater for a rare cinematic glimpse of Inuit life and legend. And once you're finished, if you're so inclined, cross another exotic culture of your list.

-Nathaniel

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