Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner)

By PETER CALDER

(Herald rating: * * * * )

The first feature film in the Inuktitut language of the Inuit (or Canadian Eskimo) people, and made by an almost exclusively Inuit cast and crew, this enthralling epic saga attracted a critical reception in America which went way beyond rapturous and had a whiff of a rather patronising reverse snobbery.

Certainly it's overstating the case to call it a masterpiece: it is too long by at least half an hour and littered with moments of performance as wooden as pantomime.

But like Himalaya, the recent release it most recalls, it's full of long minutes of jawdropping beauty and a reminder of the power of the cinema to take even the cable-TV generation to places they have never been.

Shot over six months on digital video (but blown up with such clarity that it demands to be seen on the cinema screen), it is the tale of an ancient curse which ripens into a vicious tribal feud.

The opening half-hour, in which the narrative groundwork is laid, is more than a little confusing (which the film-makers seem to be aware of since they include the line, "I can only sing this song to someone who understands"). But we soon enough gather that Atanarjuat (Ungalaaq) and Oki (Arnatsiaq), who were babies swaddled in sealskin when the curse was cast, are locked in a struggle over a woman promised to one and in love with the other.

This is a struggle that echoes any number of literatures more familiar to us - Greek, Shakespearean, Polynesian even - and it's played out in landscapes magically observed by cinematographer Norman Cohn, an American who has lived among the Inuit for two decades. He discovers a dozen shades of white in the winter expanses and revels in the sunlit grasslands of summer.

It's narratively creaky, long-winded at times and the rough editing disrupts the story's rhythm, but the precision of its ethnographic observation is endlessly fascinating.

The building of igloos, the scraping and tanning of caribou hides or sealskins, the sharpening of bone knives or spreading of seal oil on sled runners all make for moments of sublime and engrossing cinema. And the sequence in which the title character proves why he's called the fast runner is as exciting as any story since the Iliad.

The end credits roll over out-takes and production shots which make it plain that many of the cast and crew (plugged into Walkmans and wearing leather jackets) are Westernised Inuit determined to show their culture as alive and kicking. The film does that, but it does a lot more besides.

Cast: Natar Ungalaaq, Sylvia Ivalu, Peter-Henry Arnatsiaq, Lucy Tulugarjuk

Director: Zacharias Kunuk

Running time: 172m

Rating M (violence, sex scenes)

Screening: Rialto