MAP OF THE HUMAN HEART
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1993 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: This could have been a story about racism, it could have been a film with historical scope, it could have been a film about courage in wartime or an anti- war movie, it might have been about an engaging love triangle story, it might have been a study of contrasting cultures, but in trying to be all those things this murky film is not enough of any of them. (Warning: this review tells more plot than I usually do as the film is otherwise difficult to describe. For most readers I don't believe I will be damaging the enjoyment of the film.) Rating: 0 (-4 to +4).
With THE NAVIGATOR, New Zealand director Vincent Ward showed he had an unusual photographic style, some interesting ideas, and an occasional mystical impulse. They all worked fairly well in that small film. MAP OF THE HUMAN HEART is a big film, but Louis Nowra's screenplay from Ward's own story assumes it is bigger than it actually is and that Ward's direction can deliver more than it actually can.
Avik (played by Robert Joamie as a child and Jason Scott Lee as an adult) is an Inuit--or as he says, an Eskimo--who meets a cartographer and tells him his life story. As a boy in 1931, his life was changed when another cartographer, Walter Russell (played by Patrick Bergin) came to his people's land to survey for maps. Russell is impressed with the boy's curiosity and deeply affected when he discovers that the boy has tuberculosis. Russell arranges to take to take the boy to a Montreal Catholic hospital and school, flying the boy in the open biplane the cartographer came in. One taste of flying and the young Inuit is hooked for life.
At the hospital Avik is traumatized by all the scientific equipment. He is mistreated by the nuns, who are portrayed as extremely bigoted against Protestants and "half-breeds." Avik forms a close relationship with Albertine (played by Annie Galipeau as a child and Anne Parillaud as an adult). He is half white, half Inuit; she is half white, half Indian. They are torn apart by the nuns. In 1941 events draw Avik into the RAF and he, Russell, and Albertine will cross paths again.
This is a film with at least two or three very memorable scenes--one over the Albert Hall, one involving a barrage balloon, and a horrifying sequence set in Germany--but it still leaves loose ends and is unsatisfying. Patrick Bergin's last scene comes totally out of left field and seems to belong more to a surrealistic satire. The scenes of air warfare are of a unique style that perhaps gives them the feel of real Army-Air Force World War II documentaries: the scenes are murky and more than once scenes seemed out of focus.
This was a film I was anxious to see and tried very hard to enjoy, but I have to say that it really did not work for me. This British-Australian- French-Canadian-Japanese co-production is a hodge-podge of too little of too much. I give it a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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