The Village At The End Of The World Review

3rd Jul 2013

Like most people who live in big cities, I’m a right nosey parker. I while away time spent waiting at a red light wondering where everyone else is going. I look through people’s un-curtained windows as from the carriage of the Metropolitan Line as it shuffles through suburbia and wonder what they’re having for dinner. Such is the beauty of a high population density: I can know everyone and no one all at the same time. For the people of Niaqornat, North Greenland, there is little left to the imagination in this respect, for the population of this dwindling village is a paltry (or cosy?) fifty nine and it seems the older you are, the more likely that many of those individuals will be family.

In Niaqornat, less is more: less daylight, less infrastructure, less luxury. This village, on the outer-most fringes of habitation, gets by on a hand to mouth existence founded on traditional hunting and still deeply set in the myths of the Shamen of yore. Unsurprisingly given its focus, The Village at the End of the World is a simple but undoubtedly universal tale of the ebbing away of traditional village life; the ice doesn’t freeze like it used to; the government is sick of subsidising deliveries to this unprofitable blip in the snow, and most importantly, the heart of the village, its fish factory, has been shut down. As Karl, the village hunter, remarks, if the heart is not working, nothing else can work properly.

And so the crux of this neat documentary roots itself in the age old battle between progress vs. tradition. The villagers are desperate to remain true to their roots but keen to incorporate modern standards into their lives; such is the adaptable nature of the Inuit.

The film follows a few key characters: there’s lovable Lars, seventeen years old and often found whiling away his youth working in Niaqornat’s only shop, listening to McFly and dreaming of a brighter future. Niaqornat is desperately short of young people, and throughout the film we get a real sense of the isolation – practical and emotional – that Lars is living with on a daily basis. Karl is a staunch traditionalist: a natural born hunter, he can sense when he will make a ‘big kill’ days before it actually happens, and will risk his life in the pursuit of a worthy target. And charming Ilannguaq, the shit shoveller, who moved to Niaqornat for love, having met his native wife online when he was living in Southern Greenland. His devotion and appreciation for the village way of life is touching, and as an outsider, incredibly admirable.

The Village at the End of the World is very well put together, following Niaqornat over one year, dealing with one season at a time. The way of life the population is struggling to maintain (they only got electricity in 1981…) is completely alien to me, and I am incredibly grateful for this glimpse into what humanity is capable of when stripped down to the bare essentials; and warmed to see that without many of the pressures of ‘modern living’, these people maintain a much simpler happiness than many of us stuck in the rat race could hope for.

I should have liked to have seen more of the minutia of day to day living. How on earth do these people really pass the long hours of darkness over winter, when the sun never really rises? The impact of harsh realities such as this is touched on, albeit briefly; but then there’s only so much you can cram in to an 80 minute documentary.

I can only recommend watching The Village at the End of the World as a genuinely awe-inspiring look at how the real other half live. It’s a simple story, simply made, but made with what appears to be absolute integrity to the village’s basic yearning to maintain a way of life which has sustained them for hundreds and hundreds of years and which only in recent times is truly and sadly under threat.

The DVD includes a small but worthwhile selection of extras, including an informative interview with the dynamic duo Sarah Gavron (director) and David Katznelson, who uprooted their whole lives and the lives of their young children to live in Niaqornat whilst filming; and a sweet short film made by Gavron earlier in her career.