Romanticising the Past

While watching Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner) (Kunuk 2001) I was swept up in the amazing landscape and seemingly 'simple' lives the characters were leading. Critics will often damn Hollywood for "romanticising" the past (Schatz 1981, 46) but it is difficult to present a time and place different from our own in its true form for the simple fact that we did not experience it. This criticism of a romantic or mythic past was mentioned in our lecture regarding Atanarjuat as well as the Australian film Ten Canoes (de Heer and Djigirr 2006) and brought up the debate of whether it is right to depict cultures that our now experiencing social displacement in this romantic way? As a film student I feel that no movie should be held as the ultimate of its genre or story, so that while Ten Canoes may show a romanticised or "utopian" past- although not many critics did hold this opinion (Davis 2007, 6)- when when watched alongside Samson and Delilah (Thornton 2009) it simply shows another side of a complex culture.

Works Cited:

Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner). 2001. Dir. Zacharias Kunuk. Aboriginal Peoples Television Network.

Davis, Therese. “Remembering our ancestors: cross-cultural collaboration and the mediation of Aboriginal culture and history in Ten Canoes (Rolf de Heer, 2006).” Studies in Australasian Cinema, Vol.1(1), 2007: 5-14.

Samson and Delilah. 2009. Dir. Warwick Thornton. CAAMA Productions and Scarlett Pictures.

Schatz, Thomas. “The Western.” In Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking and the Studio System, 45-52. New York : Random House, 1981.

Ten Canoes. 2006. Dir. Rolf de Heer and Peter Djigirr. Adelaide Film Festival and Fandango Australia.