Venice Biennale 2019: Zacharias Kunuk’s new film works as a sad, insightful preservation project GlobeArts
In Noah Piugattuk’s igloo one day in 1961, the morning begins with tea, but his wife warns him they are out of sugar to sweeten it. It’s time, he tells her and their teenage daughter, to go trade for some more of the white man’s goods. Tea, sugar, biscuit, jam, tobacco — these are things that Noah and his family value. They aren’t so sure about money, houses or schools.
But that is what is on offer when a government agent approaches Noah as he and the clan are out seal hunting. The man keeps asking with increasing persistence when Noah will move into the settlement: There will be a house with a stove, a family allowance, a school for the children and access to a nurse. It is the need to educate the children that the government particularly insists on, although the agent also, in these Cold War days, trots out global security as an issue too.
Zacharias Kunuk’s most recent film is based on the actual story of the real Noah Piugattuk — he is shown briefly in a 1992 interview at the end — the last Inuit to abandon a traditional, semi-nomadic life and move into a Canadian-built settlement at Igloolik in the North Baffin region. Sitting somewhere between the renowned director’s more sweeping fictions and his documentary work, the film restages the encounter between Noah and Boss, the government agent.
Three powerfully naturalistic performances anchor the conversation. Apayata Kotierk plays the stolid Noah, building through gentle bemusement and recalcitrance to increasing anger and sorrow. Kim Bodnia, recognizable as the actor who played the Danish police investigator on the Scandinavian series, makes Boss frustrated and pushy but sufficiently sympathetic in his desire to provide what he perceives as help not to overbalance the piece.
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