The White Dawn

Full disclosure I only watched this film because I admire Warren Oates and I had recently watched The Paper Chase and enjoyed Timothy Bottoms in that movie. I had only a vague notion of the theme of White Dawn and checked it out from my local library.

To begin I disapprove of seeing this film as good vs bad or savage vs civilized. I see far too many summaries of this film through that lens. The story, evidently, based on real events and was subject of a novel of the same name White Dawn, tells of four men who were part of an American whaling vessel in the Baffin Bay and while on a whale hunt are wrecked and stranded on the Baffin Island. The ship thinking those men dead turn about and sail home. One of the four stranded men died early on and we know nothing of him. The three remaining men struggle across the frozen barren until fortuitously they are discovered by some Inuits. The men are taken in and fed and provided shelter. Over time the men are initially given respect and are given wives, although Oates character is a devious man who wins his wives in a game. Naturally there are cultural misunderstandings and this eventually turns to friction. The Inuits are occasionally visited by a shaman who warns the tribe the newcomers are trouble. Somewhat a slow film but it builds to a tragic end.

The film is beautifully shot. We see a seal and walrus hunt and it appears to give an authentic look at Inuit life. I say appears because I am no authority on the Inuits, but the author of the novel, James Houston, on which the film was based lived with the Inuits to learn their ways, so I am trusting his observations. We see the Inuit life is hard and simple. It alludes the Inuits occasionally suffer from starvation. The film was shot on location where the events happened. You get a sense of the isolation of the place.

Overall I enjoyed the film, mainly because I was fascinated with a look at a people oftentimes forgotten and of the location which is isolated and formidable. Oates, Gossett and Bottoms deliver great performances.

This little-known film of Philip Kaufman's is a look at a culture not seen much in films, that of the Innuit, or Eskimo people of Arctic Canada. Three whalers (Warren Oates, Timothy Bottoms and Louis Gosset Jr.) are stranded among them after a shipwreck. The year is 1896 but it could just as well be 1996 or 1796 as far as we can tell in this simple world where survival against nature is always the biggest concern. Surprisingly to me, the culture clash does not seem to be that great through most of the movie, and when it comes, it does so rather quickly. I think this makes for a less strong film but it's still an interesting one that really fascinates at times.

Cinematographer Michael Chapman ('Raging Bull') provides some great shots of the Great White North and Henry Mancini's score is very nice also. Martin Ransohoff is usually known as a producer but co-wrote the script here with Thomas Rickman.

It's 1896 in the Artic. Four whalers are stranded when their small hunting boat runs into ice and their ship fails to find them. Billy (Warren Oates), Daggett (Timothy Bottoms), and Portagee (Louis Gossett Jr.) leave behind their dead comrade and get rescued by passing Inuits. The Inuits see them as Dog-Children.

The Inuit culture seems authentic. There is a realism in the people and their way of life. The main drawback is the three survivors. They are not appealing characters. One of them needs to be heroic but the opening already lays bare that aspiration. Daggett and Portagee readily abandons a weaken Billy to die in the open. At least, Daggett should go back and try to comfort Billy. It's the same for their ship which searched for only a day or so for their missing crew. It portrays a western culture of personal greed and its corrupting influences. It doesn't mean that the Inuit culture is an utopian one. It is still very much a human world with its own villain. I simply didn't like the characters which detracts from my enjoyment of this film. I wish I like Daggett more.

Truth told there's something about the movie that doesn't work, something that stops it just short of fulfilling the potential promised by the setting, story, and talent involved. The problem is not that there's little of plot to speak of because this is the kind of movie that actually benefits from thin plotting but still something seems to be missing.

It could be that the movie follows in episodic fashion the life and misadventures of three whalers stranded in Arctic Canada who are saved from certain death by a group of Eskimos but does so without urgency, capturing an evocative snapshot of Eskimo life, perhaps very faithfully, but still in a very Discovery Channel kind of way. Sure, bears and sea otters are slaughtered for food, but it's that, natives trying to survive in their natural habitat the only way they know, not castaways desperately trying to survive in a hostile world the only way they can. We don't see the three fishes out of water struggling to survive, most everything (food, shelter, even women) is provided for them by the friendly Eskimos.

It could be that the movie is designed, conceived, as a mood piece yet is shot in a very generic by-the-numbers way. If Philip Kaufman captures no small amount of awe-inspiring shots of the glacial Canadian landscape where the movie was shot, it's because he had little more to do than point the camera at any direction around him to get them. You can imagine how much more potential someone like Werner Herzog could have milked out of a setting like this. The individual shots are good but the way they're strung together is mundane and workmanlike.

It could be that for a grim and visceral 'man in the wilderness' adventure, WHITE DAWN is really not very grim or visceral. Kaufman doesn't allow a sense of urgency frostbitten danger or impending doom to seep in. When the three whalers make a run for freedom with a stolen Eskimo boat only to find themselves stranded in the ice again, an Eskimo conveniently shows up to lead them back to safety. Misguidedly the emphasis here is on picturesque rather than bleak. Compare how the three whalers are treated by the friendly wife-sharing Eskimos to the gruesome fate that is reserved in the hands of Algonquin Indians for the Catholic missionaries in Bruce Beresford's BLACK ROBE and the difference highlights a lot of what makes WHITE DAWN a mostly lighthearted affair.

Still, not unlike Nicholas Ray's THE SAVAGE INNOCENTS, a lot of the small vignettes that show the whalers cohabiting with the Eskimos are a lot of fun to watch. Chief among the one where Warren Oates cons a man out of his two daughters in a knife-throwing betting contest. But unlike Ray's movie, THE WHITE DAWN hovers plot less, suspended between beautiful scenery and Eskimo customs, for a little too long.

Perhaps it's the combination of all the above reasons that makes WHITE DAWN an interesting watchable movie, one closer to a hit than a miss. Warren Oates as the grizzly scruffy third mate is a pleasure to watch, this is the kind of character he could play with eyes closed and that's pretty much what he does. And then there's the ending, which I won't spoil, that couldn't have come from anywhere else than typically disillusioned 70's American cinema.

Philip Kaufman is a filmmaker I find fascinating, but few other people seem to share that enthusiasm (or even know who he is). He made some oddities in the 1960s and 1970s, before having an amazing streak between 1978 and 1988, directing: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (an improvement of a remake), The Wanderers (most underrated coming-of-age movie), The Right Stuff (that one's literally perfect), and then The Unbearable Lightness of Being (very different to the book, but great for different reasons). His '90s output - or at least what I've seen - is interesting, but not as impressive; movies like Henry & Jules and Quills are both boundary-pushing and a bit patience-testing.

Anyway, seeking out something that's obscure even by his standards was always going to be interesting. Enter The White Dawn, which can't really be included as part of his hot streak. It is pretty decent for what it tries to do, but it lacks a certain something. Maybe that's the point. Kaufman operates on a strange level most people don't really click with. Even I've only clicked with his stuff a handful of times. But what a handful!

The White Dawn is about three European (I think) men getting stranded in the Arctic and then rescued by an Eskimo tribe. I liked how there was subtitled language for the tribe; perhaps even more of their dialogue than English dialogue. There was also a level of respect or at least empathy that you don't always get in films of this age, dealing with some kind of cultural divide.

I guess it fell apart a bit narratively and pacing-wise. It's sort of just a slice-of-life film, at a point, and in an odd way. It continues on for a bit and then it ends, and I was fighting the urge to drift out of it. I think it falters in some areas but I appreciated the authenticity and the way it looked at a different culture of people. The authenticity also carried over to the look and feel of the film; it's an effectively chilly one.