Atanarjuat the Fast Runner

Natar Ungalaaq, a well-known Inuit sculptor and actor, is impishly appealing as Atanarjuat, a hunter perhaps too besotted with his own talents. In his first acting role, Peter-Henry Arnatsiaq is menacing as Oki.

Not only one of the most intriguing feature-film projects in decades and enough plain-spoken anthropology for three credits at Harvard, but one of the most flat-out entertaining movies of the year.

If anything, it should accomplish its mission of making people curious about this rarely filmed culture.

Spellbinding as storytelling, it also prompts admiration for the Inuit people's patience, resilience and their overriding concern for harmony with the world around them.

Running close to three hours, it's a long film but also one of those movies that almost physically transports you to another place.

Written in basic Inuit, directed by Zacharia Kunuk and photographed with tableauesque dedication by Norman Cohn, an in-comer who lived with the tribes, it feels the authentic ethnic article.

While the film's scenery may seem uninhabitably otherworldly, the central narrative of revenge and forgiveness has an elemental, human appeal.

Kunuk's cameras send back pictures of alarming visual clarity. For every moment when the film seems most what it is -- a directorial debut -- there are three moments both ancient and human.

Natar Ungalaaq is especially good as the title character; his naked run, a Northern Exposure of the trust kind deserves some kind of award, if not medal for bravery.

A cinematic marvel that stands to challenge just about everything you thought you knew about movie-making, life in general -- and your role in both.