The White Dawn

A film set in the Arctic. The year is 1896. A whaling ship is caught in the ice. Three men set out in a boat. Then a storm comes. They are stranded on the ice. A group of Inuit find them. They bring the men to their camp. They warm them, feed them, and treat their injuries. From there the film is a story of living together. Three strangers inside a community. Billy is a sailor. Sharp, quick to learn, and he knows how to use a situation. Portagee is quiet. He adapts and moves into the community. Daggett is young. He never understands what he is doing wrong. The first months go well. The men learn to hunt, pick up the language, and give something back. Then it begins to spoil. Billy teaches gambling. Then how to make drink. The question of the women arises. The community has an order built on sharing and the men understand it as ownership. A hunt goes badly. The food runs short. The shaman says why: the strangers. What the narrative is interested in is not rescue but spoiling: its idea is that the guests do not understand the order built around them and bring it down without noticing. The narrative does not idealise the Inuit but puts them at the centre. Most of the speech is in Inuktitut and is not translated. Like the three men, the viewer does not understand. The ending is entirely hard. It was shot in real Arctic conditions. The crew stayed there for months and the local community appears in it. The source is James Houston's novel; he had lived in the north for years and wrote the screenplay. Michael Chapman shot it. Philip Kaufman directed. Warren Oates, Timothy Bottoms, Louis Gossett Jr. and Simonie Kopapik are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes 1970s American cinema and narratives about the meeting of cultures. Who it is not for: anyone looking for pace; the narrative moves slowly and most of what happens happens quietly.