Main Cast: Jason Scott Lee, Anne Parillaud, Patrick Bergin, Robert Joamie, John Cusack, Annie Galipeau
Release Year: 1993
Country: CA/AU/NZ/FR
Run Time: 109 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
A white, Inuit boy named Avik is the focus of New Zealand director Vincent Ward's meditation on race and romance. In the opening moments of the movie, set in 1931 in the Arctic-Canadian settlement Nunataaq, Avik (portrayed initially by Robert Joamie) lives under the watchful eye of his grandmother (Jayko Pitseolak). While tagging along after British cartographer Walter Russell (Patrick Bergin), Avik falls prey to the "white man's disease,"--tuberculosis; to assuage his own guilt, Russell takes the boy to a Montreal clinic to recover. There, Avik meets Albertine, a mixed-blood Indian girl, and the two fall in love, but their relationship is quickly broken up by the Mother Superior who is in charge of the clinic. Years later, Avik again meets Russell, who this time is on a mission to recover the German U-boat lying wrecked off the coast of Nunataaq. Avik asks for Russell's help in learning the whereabouts of Albertine, and he gives the cartographer a chest X-ray of the girl which he has carried with him since their separation. More time elapses, and Avik (now played by Jason Scott Lee) has become a British bombardier fighting in World War II. He is sought out by Albertine (Anne Parillaud), who has become Russell's mistress. Still, she begins an affair with Avik; Russell soon finds out, and as revenge sends Avik and his crew on a suicide mission of which Avik is the lone survivor. Despondent over his war experiences, Avik flees to Canada, where he becomes an alcoholic; decades later, he is sought out by Rainee (Clotilde Courau), the daughter born from his affair with Albertine. On his way to the girl's wedding, Avik is killed in an accident; his body washes up on the beach at Nunataaq, a wedding gift still clutched in his arms. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
Review
By engaging such unfamiliar cinematic topics as the Inuit community and cartography, Vincent Ward's Map of the Human Heart is in many ways a highly original film. But its insights are only slightly above average, so it doesn't have the lingering impact it should. Eager to turn the separated lovers, played earnestly by Jason Scott Lee and Anne Parillaud, into the stuff of epic tragedy, Ward makes the curious decision to have Avik's surrogate father (Patrick Bergin) become his rival, the result of a multitude of chance meetings. This seems to be a comment on the two-faced nature of Avik's white savior, and hence the civilized world in general, which Avik enters by betraying his simpler Inuit roots. But it plays more as a case of heaping irony upon irony, drawing attention to Ward's exaggerated ruminations on fate: Once Avik is, improbably, reunited with his childhood love, she's in the arms of the very man who made the reunion possible. Ward's film is best when providing the thoughtful details of their romance, from the innocence of their giggly Catholic school bonding, to their wartime meeting in the domed ceiling of a building that may be bombed at any moment. Any film that stages a passionate tryst atop a hot air balloon -- not in the passenger area, mind you, but actually on top -- definitely has a certain uniqueness. Ultimately, Lee and Parillaud give Map of the Human Heart enough emotional resonance to carry it past its clumsier metaphors and thematic over-stretching. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide
Jeanne Moreau - Sister Banville; Ben Mendelsohn - Farmboy; Clotilde Courau - Rainee; Jerry Snell - Boleslaw; Harry Hill - X-Ray Doctor; Gordon Masten - Capt. Johns; Minor Mustain - Army Sergeant; Mark Ruel - Photo Analyst; Richard Zeman - Military Policeman; Bronwen Mantel - Woman Guest; Charlotte Coleman - Julie; Kliment Dentchev - Doctor on Boat; Monique Spaziani - Nurse Beatrice; Griffith Brewer - Homeguard
Credit
Jean Baptiste Tard - Art Director, Redmond Morris - Associate Producer, Vincent Ward - Co-producer, Timothy White - Co-producer, Sylvaine Sainderichin - Co-producer, Renee April - Costume Designer, Penny Rose - Costume Designer, Pedro Gandol - First Assistant Director, Vincent Ward - Director, Frans Vandenburg - Editor, John Scott - Editor, Bob Weinstein - Executive Producer, Harvey Weinstein - Executive Producer, Graham Bradstreet - Executive Producer, Gabriel Yared - Composer (Music Score), Micheline Trepanier - Makeup, John Beard - Production Designer, Eduardo Serra - Cinematographer, Tim Bevan - Producer, Michele Forest - Set Designer, Richard Conway - Special Effects, Horton Foote - Screenwriter, Vincent Ward - Screenwriter, Louis Nowra - Screenwriter
Gabriel Yared (Keyboards), Gabriel Yared (Producer), Gabriel Yared (Associate Producer), Herve Le Coz (Producer), Herve Le Coz (Engineer), Herve Le Coz (Associate Producer), Herve Le Coz (Mixing), George Rodi (Programming), George Rodi (Producer), George Rodi (Sound Design), Celmar Engel (Programming), Celmar Engel (Sound Design), Michel Coeuriot (Arranger), Michel Coeuriot (Producer), Hervé Joulin (Horn), Mathilde Walpoel (Harp), Jean Robitaille (Engineer), Jean Robitaille (Mixing)
The film, set mostly before and during World War II, centers on the life of a Canadian Inuit boy, Avik (played as a child by Robert Joamie, and as an adult by Jason Scott Lee), who joins the Royal Canadian Air Force and eventually, as a crewmember of a Lancaster bomber, participates in the notorious firebombing of Dresden. Throughout his life, Avik is haunted by love for a Métis girl, Albertine (played by Anne Parillaud).
The film also stars Patrick Bergin, who plays a pivotal role as both surrogate father to Avik and his primary rival in Albertine's love. Jeanne Moreau has a minor role as a Québécois nun. John Cusack also has a small but important role as the mapmaker to whom Avik relates his incredible tale.
The film's re-creation of the firebombing of Dresden is one of the most graphic and powerful sequences in the film. On the day Ward finished shooting these scenes, he received word that his father, who had actually participated in the historical firebombing of Dresden, had died. This is why Ward chose to dedicate the film to him.
There are two other scenes in the movie which garnered much attention. The first one is a pivotal love scene that takes place on top of an English military blimp (not in a cabin or gondola but actually on top of the blimp), the other is the final scene of the film which had a plot twist ending. It should be noted that this movie predates Usual Suspects, and Sixth Sense which introduced many new viewers to plot twist endings.
The scenes in "Nunatuk," the region of Northern Canada where Avik's people are from, were filmed on location in what is now Nunavut, using local Inuit as extras.
The script was written by Australian author Louis Nowra, using a 10-page treatment Ward had written a year earlier as his guide.
