Red Snow: Impressionistic Displacement Story Timely But Overstuffed
By Liam Lacey
Rating: B-
Red Snow, the debut feature from playwright Marie Clements is timely, dealing both with Canada's recent involvement in the Afghan war and the rise of Indigenous rights in the last few years. Since Canadian troops withdrew in 2014, we know the film takes place before then, though there are few time markers in this impressionistic film about a Gwich'in soldier caught by the Taliban and relying on wisdom gained during his traumatic past in Canada's far north.
A busy opening involves Dylan (Asivak Koostachin), the beforementioned Gwich'in soldier who gets caught in Taliban ambush and taken prisoner along with his Pashtan translator, schoolteacher Aman, and Aman's adult daughter, Khatira (Mozdah Jamalzadah) and young son, Tahir.
During his interrogation by the evil Taliban commander, Ramiz (Kane Mahon), Dylan has a series of flashbacks. We see him as a teen (played by Samuel Marty) back to his home in the Northwest Territories. The traumatic event that led to Dylan signing up with the Canadian armed forces involve the death of his Inuit cousin and girlfriend, Asana (Miika Bryce Whiskeyjack), memories of his younger brother, Jojo (Koen Meserah-Zdyb) and the comforting advice of his grandmother, Ruth (Tantoo Cardinal).
Red Snow has been well-received at a series of festivals (including most popular Canadian film at the Vancouver International Film Festival) and has the mixture of action, international cast, locations and historical sweep one associates with bigger-budget films. As well, the themes of identity and place raise provocative issues. Is Dylan a soldier from an occupied land occupying someone else's land?
In practice though, Red Snow bites off more than it can comfortably chew. The acting often feels stilted and schematically related. In Afghanistan, Dylan finds a plucky young woman and a cute Afghan boy who are the correlatives of his former girlfriend and little brother back home. The Taliban commander Ramiz — a first cousin to the kindly sophisticated schoolteacher, Aram — isn't just a barbaric fanatic. He has insulting ideas about Indigenous North Americans borrowed from cowboy movies. And with the surfeit of the dead cousin's voiceover, images of swirling snow, and slow-motion flashbacks, the film feels not just dreamlike but woozy.
Shortly after its midpoint, the film turns into a chase movie, as Dylan and his new family set out across the wintry landscape seeking asylum. At moments, the movie verges on something rich, a different kind of Western, where the refugees are the heroes, and a way of recasting history from the perspectives of the present knowledge.
Red Snow. Written and directed by Marie Clements. Starring Tantoo Cardinal, Asivak Koostachin, Mozhdah Jamalzadah, Samuel Marty, Miika Bryce Whiskeyjack, Ishaan Vasdev, Shafin Karim and Kane Mahon. Opens March 13 in select Cineplex theatres in Toronto, Ottawa, and Vancouver.