Since my only outdoor activity this past week was shoveling snow, here is a winter movie-night post:
When his family’s trust fund runs out during the Great Depression, Jamie is sent from his high-class boarding school to live with his trapper uncle in the far north of Canada. Feeling unhappy and out of place, he falls in with a similarly out of sorts Cree Indian teenager name Awasis. After becoming “lost in the barrens,” they are forced to work together to survive and grow from boys to men.
While no work of art, this Canadian film adaptation of the Farley Mowat novel does a good job portraying the feel of a cold and forbidding Canadian wilderness. It is also respectful of Indian culture — showing the talents and traditions of a people capable of thriving in what looks to others like inhospitable wilderness. Shelter building, hunting, repairing canoes, and making snowshoes are a few of the backwoods skills one glimpses along the way. Complemented by beautiful shots of wooden canoes on Canadian rivers, Lost in the Barrens makes a good family film for a chilly winter night.