Ce qu'il faut pour vivre (The Necessities of Life)

Inuit hunter Tiivii (Natar Ungalaaq) finds himself in a bit of a pickle in Benoît Pilon's Ce qu'il faut pour vivre (The Necessities of Life), after he's transported away from his family on Baffin Island, where he's lived his entire life, by boat, to a sanatorium in Québec City, having been diagnosed with tuberculosis.

That's a serious transition.

Linguistic factors initially accentuate his sense of isolation until he's introduced to a precocious youngster fluent in both languages.

Kaki (Paul-André Brasseur) enables Tiivii to communicate, share his stories, modestly acculturate, and actively interact.

The film innocently blends differing urban and rural dispositions in a wondrous yet suffocating unexpected encounter with seemingly magical technological and naturalistic attributes whose intricate designs and developments stifle while encouraging Tiivii's desire for exploration.

I loved his first sighting of a tree.

Intercultural relations are helplessly, patiently, curiously, humorously, and communally negotiated, as differing aspects of culturo-linguistic adaptations socialize.

Thought the ending was a bit too tragic.

Seemed like a happy ending film to me.

Thought Tiivii's telephone conversation with his wife was cut off too quickly as well.

Excellent expression of an individual's relationship with the land however.

The Meaning of Life

Hugh Brody's The Meaning of Life introduces us to several inmates of the Kwìkwèxwelhp minimum security correctional facility (The Kwìkwèxwelhp Healing Village), located on Chehalis First Nations territory in British Columbia. Providing several of them with the opportunity to speak, a vicious cycle of abuse and violent crime is showcased. The residents, having been sentenced to life in prison, recognize that the crimes they committed were heinous and deplorable, the kinds of acts that aren't easily forgiven. Wishing they had taken a different path while making the most of the one they're on, many of them occupy their time with various productive tasks, often producing venerable works of art. The healing village's operation is guided by First Nations's spirituality, and its focus provides the inmates with a high degree of dignity. It is certain that they committed brutal crimes for which one must be locked up as a consequence. But what becomes clear is that most of them were the extreme victims of abuse themselves, many of them Natives who suffered under the Residential School System, and wherever they went prior to committing their crimes, there were few people if anyone willing to try and understand their situation, who weren't selling drugs and/or alcohol. What The Meaning of Life poetically captures is the beauty remaining within these victims, as well as the fact that serving time can have enormously beneficial spiritual affects, especially when that time is served within an institution that respects its subjects. There are certainly no easy answers when it comes to political and ethical viewpoints regarding the nature of discipline and punishment, but people and institutions which attempt to understand the historical, social, and psychological reasons why something occurred, rather than simply judging the fact that it did, are moving in the right direction in my books, dynamically examining multidimensional big picture questions through the productive lens of compassion and culture.