LAFF 2011: ON THE ICE

Qalli (Josiah Patkota) in On the Ice.

The frozen ones

By Ed Rampell

What if playwright Eugene O’Neill had been an Inuit? His classics such as The Iceman Cometh may have been set in another culture and environment, but their universal themes could still find expression, even in Barrow, Alaska, where most of writer-director Andrew Okpeaha MacLean’s On the Ice takes place. Indeed, the substance abuse that plagues O’Neill’s barflies also ravages Inupiaqs, Natives of Alaska, in MacLean’s feature film debut.

Americanization has been a disaster for many of the indigenous people conquered, swallowed up and spit out by the racist American empire. From the genocide of the so-called “Indians” to the overthrow of the independent Kingdom of Hawaii to the nuclear testing at Bikini atoll, and so on ad infinitum, aboriginal inhabitants have been uprooted and displaced by endless expansionism. Now Alaskan Natives are saddled with that latest affront called “Sarah Palin” -- no wonder those alienated teens at Barrow turn to drink and crack and, like Bristol Palin, contend with unplanned pregnancies.

On the Ice focuses on two Inupiaq teens as they are leaving high school. Qalli (Josiah Patkotak) is preparing to attend college far from Barrow. His stalwart father (Teddy Kyle Smith) is an efficient emergency responder who performs a delicate balancing act, with one mukluk in the white man’s world and the other in the Inupiaq’s realm, which is still dominated by endless vistas of tundra. Qalli’s classmate and close friend since boyhood, Aivaaq (Frank Qutuq Irelan), is a substance abuser with an alcoholic mother; his father died of booze before he reached 30. Aivaaq has also apparently knocked up his girlfriend, and the irresponsible teen can barely be a boyfriend, let alone a blubber-winner and father.

Tragedy befalls the friends during a snowmobile seal hunting expedition. But the story rests more on how they deal with what happened rather than on exactly what did occur. (As conventional wisdom has had it since Watergate, the cover-up is always worse than the original scandal. If you don’t believe me, go ask disgraced ex-congressman Anthony Weiner.)

During a Q&A following Sunday's LAFF screening, MacLean stated that he was half-Inupiaq, Barrow is his hometown and he’s related to about half of the cast, which largely consists of non-professionals. (MacLean, however, went to film school.) They were recruited after a talent hunt that scoured the Canadian and American Arctic in search of indigenous talent at the top of the world.

Truth be told, at first glance MacLean’s depiction of Inupiaqs is unflattering; aside for Qalli’s father, who is eventually ensnared by the misdeeds, noble savages a la Robert Flaherty’s 1922 docudrama, Nanook of the North,need not apply. With its crack cocaine, liquor, ramshackle hovels and blaring rap songs (one number is called, appropriately, "Arctic Thug") the Barrow of On the Ice comes across like a stereotypical ghetto. (Perhaps the film should have been called Soul on Ice?) Talk about the Barrow gang! In particular, Aivaaq comes across as a totally out-of-control loser, jerk and menace to society.

There has been a trend in world cinema for indigenous filmmakers to make their own movies and tell their own stories. But this doesn’t mean that the Native depictions are always flattering.