Aatsinki: The Story of Arctic Cowboys ***
Dir: Jessica
Oreck. With: Aarne Aatsinki, Lasse Aatsinki. 84 mins. Cert: NC
Jessica Oreck’s
Kickstarter-funded documentary moves in similar circles to the recent Sweetgrass and Leviathan: eschewing context for immersive textures, it plunges us
into the lives of those Lasses (and lassies) with lassos charged with
controlling Lapland’s reindeer population. While observing routines that
wouldn’t be so alien to the Duke of Red
River – building fences and fires, funnelling grunting beasts this way or
that – it sometimes strays off the beaten track into shapelessness, but Oreck
lends individual segments a quiet fascination: rarely can anyone have paid such
rapt attention to reindeer dental records, or made such plain, quotidian drama
from a wolverine hunt. Sensitive viewers should be warned of some grisliness
involving those unfortunate Rudolphs marked for slaughter, though even this
might be considered a show of Aatsinki’s
honest curiosity, how Oreck reaches into the unglamorous guts of this world to
pull out something you won’t have seen before.
Aatsinki: The Story of Arctic Cowboys is touring selected cinemas nationwide.
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