Movie Review: The Snow Walker

On the surface, The Snow Walker is a very simple tale of adventure and survival.  Set in the 1950s, it features a cocky white pilot, Charlie, who is bribed with walrus tusks into taking a sick Inuit girl to a big-city hospital, only to crash his plane somewhere in the Northwest Territories.  Charlie thinks he has what it takes to survive on his own in the wilderness, but quickly discovers that he’ll have to rely on the Inuit girl’s knowledge and skills if he is to survive the mosquitoes, the swamps, and the snow without dying of exposure or starvation.

If this was the only story The Snow Walker had to tell, I doubt it would have struck me the way it has.  Over the past week I’ve found myself haunted by the film.  Against the backdrop of the glorious Canadian landscape, and through the dynamic performance of the film’s two leads, The Snow Walker tells a story that is more than the sum of its parts.  Though the narrative is in part propelled by the suspense of wondering if and how the main characters are going to survive, the film tells an essentially a character-driven story: we are watching a transformation occur in the main character as he learns not only how to survive, but how to love.

This love is both simple yet powerful, and of a kind that is not commonly portrayed on film.  It is not romantic love, but it is also not a mere familial, brother-sister bond.  It is rather what I would call agapic love: love built on self-sacrifice and total self-gift.  It is a love that Kanaalaq almost innately possesses, as she selflessly and wordlessly feeds, clothes, and heals her companion, no questions asked.  Later in the film, its Eucharistic qualities come to the fore as she shares the story of how her mother left her starving family so that her children could have her share of food, and how she herself bit her own wrist to let her dying sister drink her blood.  Kanaalaq laughs as she tells this last bit, marveling at how she “tricked” Tarqeq, the moon god, by saving her sister’s life, and I could not help but be reminded of St. Gregory of Nyssa’s ransom theory of atonement, which holds that Jesus’ death “tricked” the devil and won life for the rest of mankind.

Charlie, for his part, must learn this kind of love from Kanaalaq, and he must learn that how we love in life will affect how we approach death.  When Charlie and Kanaalaq find a wrecked plane containing a charred corpse but also a trove of tools and weapons, he does not understand, at first, why Kanaalaq refuses to go near any of the dead man’s belongings.  Instead she builds a funeral cairn for the body and buries his tools with him.  Slowly, Charlie begins to see that people – and objects – have more meaning than his utilitarianism is willing to grant.  Kanaalaq’s self-giving love extends even to the dead as she is willing to sacrifice a chance for survival to ensure that the unknown dead man will be safe in the afterlife. 

Kanaalaq’s funeral ritual for the dead pilot is counterpoised with the funeral rites of white Canadians, which Kanaalaq herself, though no one in the film is aware of it, receives as she faces her own death.  When Shep, Charlie’s boss, assumes that Charlie has died and holds a memorial service for him, we hear a eulogy lamenting the loss of a life cut short in its prime.  The viewer, however, knows that this eulogy is not for Charlie; it is for Kanaalaq, and the poem becomes a voiceover for scenes of the dying girl coughing up blood and being carried by Charlie across the snow. 

It is, visually and aurally, a moment of cultural and religious contact and enrichment.  Never does the film devolve into cheap comparisons that glorify Inuit culture and denigrate white Canadians.  Nor do we get the sense that Charlie will abandon his modernized ways and embrace the Inuit lifestyle.  Though Charlie has been eating sitsik and going spear-fishing, we feel confident that if he survives he will be grateful to return to the city and enjoy a steak-and-potato dinner at Moishe’s.

But we do see that Charlie has been incalculably altered by his contact with Kanaalaq.  Charlie is ravaged with guilt over his actions during wartime, and we get the sense that his “girl in every port” lifestyle is driven by a “you only live once” attitude.  But Kanaalaq’s quiet, patient love gives him the chance to forgive himself, and once he can do that, he is able to break out of his selfishness and learn how to love.  The ultimate symbol of his transformation comes in his willingness to leave his walrus tusks – the price which Kanaalaq’s family paid for her passage with Charlie in their ironic attempt to save her life – in Kanaalaq’s empty funeral cairn. 

The cairn is empty because Kanaalaq, like her mother before her, leaves Charlie in the middle of the night so that his journey through the deepening winter might be easier without the burden of a dying woman.  Charlie’s grief for Kanaalaq is intense, but he has also learned another lesson from her: not only how to love, but how to let himself be loved.  Rather than chasing after what he desires, Charlie has learned how to accept the gifts that others want to give him.  To let oneself be loved is often the best gift we can give.

Contrast Charlie at the end of his journey with Charlie at the beginning.  In the opening scenes of the film, Charlie is celebrating his birthday.  His girlfriend tries to give him a gift, which he postpones opening because he is eager for sex.  We never do find out what was in the gift; Charlie is called away to work before he could open it, and he departs on his fateful voyage without saying goodbye to his girlfriend.  When Charlie is believed to be dead, we watch as his apartment is cleaned out and the unopened gift swept into a cardboard box.

The Charlie at the end of the film, however, would have known better than to leave that gift unopened, just as he now knows how to accept with gratitude the sacrifices another person wishes to make for him – not because he deserves it, but because she loves him.  How many of us walk away from the gift of grace, ostensibly out of pride and arrogance, but more probably out of a deep fear that we are not worthy: what God could love us so much?  But this sort of thinking selfishly places the emphasis on ourselves, the recipients of the gift, rather than the other – the giver, the lover.  Kanaalaq has taught Charlie that learning to accept such love is the first step in learning how to give it.  And it is only by the power of this love that we can make meaning out of the often bleak landscape of human existence.