The Snow Walker (2003) shows a more primitive side of love, a side that casts away material comforts in favor of simply the closeness of another. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie and recommend it as a romance and adventure movie. It makes one wonder if the Eskimos knew more about love centuries ago than modern American culture does now.
It was directed and written by Charles Martin Smith known for being the actor who plays accountant that gets Al Capone in the Untouchables. He has been in a long list of other films through the years and is instantly recognizable in films. He doesn’t appear in this one but as I said, he wrote and directed it. The two main characters in this freezing love story are Charlie Halliday played by Barry Pepper, known for Saving Private Ryan. and Kanaalaq played by Annabella Piugattuk, known for Into the West.
This is the storyline from IMDB:
1953. Charlie Halliday, a former WWII fighter pilot, is a Yellowknife-based bush pilot. Like many of the white in the area, he does not associate with the Inuit except for what he can get out of them in bartering. On a personal plane trip, he runs across a small family of nomadic Inuit. The female of the group, named Kanaalaq, has what Charlie suspects is tuberculosis. In exchange for some ivory, Charlie agrees to fly her to a hospital in Yellowknife. En route back to the city, Charlie is forced to make a crash landing when the plane develops mechanical problems. Although both Charlie and Kanaalaq are unharmed by the crash, the plane is totaled, they are in the middle of nowhere, the radio doesn’t seem to be working, they have a meager amount of supplies, and Charlie’s whereabouts are probably unknown to others since he made a detour from his original route. Furthermore, they can’t communicate with each other as Kanaalaq only knows a few words of English.
The Snow Walker is a tough film to get through in the same way Dances With Wolves is. Both present ironically touching love stories. Unlike Wolves, however, the emphasis in Snow is completely on the love story. Whether it is the romance we all dream of will vary person to person. Still, it shows a selfish man who comes to appreciate true and primal love in a way I hadn’t thought of before. I gave it 5/5 for a romance. It brings up valuable questions for a relationship. How far would you hike in the snow for the one you love? is one of those questions.
