Planet in Focus 2020: The Last Ice
Scott Ressler’s The Last Ice traces the cultural and environmental fallout of the melting of sea ice in the Arctic. In many ways, The Last Ice resembles an editorial feature in National Geographic magazine, which is fitting because the iconic scientific journalism outfit produced the film. The film introduces us to an environmental problem, which is that the summer sea ice in the Arctic will be gone by 2040. It then examines how that problem is affecting local communities and the endemic wildlife of the region and contemplates possible avenues forward, offering a glimmer of hope in the midst of desperation. Like a typical story in the aforementioned magazine, the film is both informative and handsomely produced, with a wealth of gorgeous cinematography that showcases the wide-ranging impacts of its subject.
While director Scott Ressler divides his attention in a variety of ways, his main focus is on the life of the Inuit on either side of the water corridor between Nunavut and Greenland. In the past, the corridor was mostly frozen over and Inuit from either side would trade and travel freely between the two nations. Today, the ice is less frequent and Inuit find national regulations getting in the way of free travel between their ancestral homes. Of course, the barriers to easy trade and movement are only a part of the problem facing the Inuit in the High Arctic. They also have to contend with high food prices, high suicide rates, a diminshing pool of wild animals to hunt, encroaching resource extraction companies, and the individual and collective trauma resulting from the residential school system and colonial malpractice.
The film zeroes in on two individuals and uses them as avatars for their community: Aleqatsiaq Peary and Maatalii Okalik. Aleqatsiaq Peary lives in Greenland and wants to become a great seal hunter. He came to hunting relatively late in life, after having spent much of his childhood in Nuuk and back in Denmark, and wants to make up for lost time. However, he’s also dealing with a resting tremor, which may forebode some neurological disease which makes hunting impossible. Of course, with the receding sea ice, hunting may no longer be possible anyway.
Ressler follows Aleqatsiaq on hunting trips out onto the ice, watching him gather his sled dogs, race across the wide expanses of snow, and join with other hunters in tracking and killing seals. The footage of the ice is beautiful; there’s a constant refrain throughout the film that European settlers always found the ice barren and forbidding, which is disputed by the stunning photography at every turn. When Aleqatsiaq talks about the ice, his enthusiasm matches the physical beauty on display; his eyes light up and he exudes such joy at working on the land.
Like Aleqatsiaq, Maatalii Okalik grew up away from her traditional homeland. She lives in Nunavut, but grew up in Ottawa and so Inuk traditions and language are still a learned practice for her. She works with Inuk youth to maintain the cultural legacy and foster a renewal of traditional practices. If Aleqatsiaq shows us typical Inuk life out on the ice, Maatalii introduces us to life in the settlements, which can be hard due to high food prices, economic precarity, and epidemics of depression and suicide that have lain waste to the youth in the community. However, it’s important to point out that Ressler’s film doesn’t amplify the social issues of life in Nunavut at the expense of its joys; characters talk about these problems, but they’re mostly presented off camera. Ressler instead chooses to film the joyful parties and conversations between people in the community, and the positive moments that people share. The economic and social conditions discussed underline how important these cultural celebrations are, making a renewal of community traditions all the more precious.
Ressler also offers a recent history of the High Arctic and the formation of Nunavut during the film. He interviews John Magoalik, known as the “father of Nunavut,” who worked for decades lobbying the Canadian government to form the territory, finally seeing his work come to fruition in 1999. He also draws on classical educational recordings from the 1950s describing Inuk ways of life, contrasting these colonial documents that talk of the promise of the settlements and describing Inuk traditions as archaic with clear evidence of the opposite being true in the present. It’s an obvious tactic for demonstrating the legacy of colonization, but nevertheless effective.
While the moment-to-moment minutiae of The Last Ice focuses on the lives of Aleqatsiaq, Maatalii, and others in Greenland and Nunavut, the overall arc of the film shows how Inuit are returning to traditional subsistence lifestyles at a time when changing environmental conditions make those lifestyles all the more precarious. Thus, the final moments in the film hope for a way forward that allows Inuit across the High Arctic to unite in common cause and mitigate the environmental impact on their communities, preserving their subsistence lifestyles and holding resource extraction companies at bay, who hope to plunder the Arctic Sea for trillions in fossil fuels.
The promise of the ending may be something of a false hope, but The Last Ice surely shows that it’s a future worth working towards. Its beautiful cinematography and compelling personal narratives showcase the value in the High Arctic and the traditional Inuk lifestyles. The film is rather cursory with such a broad area of focus, but for anyone wanting to understand the issues at stake in the Arctic, The Last Ice is a useful primer.
7 out of 10
The Last Ice (2019, USA)
Directed by Scott Ressler.