Philip Kaufman’s not-quite-good-enough fact-inspired film is a culture clash from the turn-of-the-last-century about a trio of Arctic-stranded whalers saved by a tribe of Inuit Peoples. Often exciting, with a fine documentary favor, the film is hobbled by character attitudes & cinematic tics that smell more of 1974 than 1896. So Timothy Bottoms’ open-hearted hippie kid is the one eager to join in tribal ways; Lou Gossett, an exotic outsider to his mates and the Eskimo, can see both sides; leaving gruff Warren Oates as the unaccepting conservative old guard, twisted by his debt to damn savages. (Note how Oates reacts in disgust to a polar bear hunt when he should find common ground in a simlarity to whaling.) And the inevitable infection of Inuit ways (alternating the pure & honorable with religious superstitions inimical to the whalers’ understanding) with contaminating foreign influences (booze, gambling, ownership) is too commonplace to hold up against the unusual locales. It leaves the film’s better set pieces (igloo construction, tribal dance, hunting) working as stand-alone episodes. Still, the use of real Native Peoples and incredibly difficult Arctic locations is a bump up from Anthony Quinn in THE SAVAGE INNOCENTS/’60 or the soundstage fakery of ICE STATION ZEBRA/’68.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: An old Hollywood maxim has it that films set in cold climates struggle at the box-office. True enough for the films mentioned above. (Paramount not even bothering to come up with a halfway decent poster on this one.)
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