The heart and lungs: The Necessities of Life

Of all the diverse sounds that intermingle in its vibrant, wordless opening scenes, we hear two things in particular near the start of The Necessities of Life (Ce qu’il faut pour vivre). The wheezing breath of Tivii and the foghorn of a distant ship emerge from the aural foliage, portending not only to the imminent cultural conflicts but also to the tone of this muted, often lovely and very moving film. It’s 1952, and Tivii, diagnosed with tuberculosis, is taken from his wife and children and Baffin Island home by a passing ship of government medical inspectors. Three months later Tivii finds himself at a Quebec sanatorium. He receives a shave and a haircut, some strange clothing, and painful treatment from people with whom he cannot communicate other than through grunts and gestures. He worries that he’ll soon die. Caught in a puzzling place more crowded than anywhere he’s ever known yet lonelier than he’s ever felt, there’s the eerie sense that he’s slipped into some sort of purgatory.

Written by Bernard Émond and directed by Benoît Pilon, The Necessities of Life is a fairly simple story that reflects a much larger one, that of the growing pains of Canadian multiculturalism. Tivii shares with his caretakers no language, customs, diet, social mores or system of belief, just residency within the same vast nation and access to its developing health care system. The sanatorium staff are rendered neither resentful, racist villains nor endlessly patient, enlightened altruists, though there is one nurse so touched by Tivii’s plight—and, presumably, senses that his weakened mental health threatens to exacerbate the effects of his disease—that she makes significant efforts to reach out to him. Tivii is profoundly confused. He’s gentle, but not always generous, and will need to plumb the depths of despair and self-pity before he can recover and ultimately attain some sense of reconciliation with the white people who have disrupted his life so as to save it.

Pilon never rushes things, but he’s sly about where he places Émond’s turning points. The music of Robert Marcel Lepage remains always quiet enough to make room for wind or feet crunching on hardened snow. Photographed by Michel La Veaux, the film retains a sensitivity to the contrasting light and colours of the exterior and interior worlds, the tension between the two being essential to understanding Tivii’s particular strain of homesickness. But it is Tivii himself, or rather Natar Ungalaaq, the truly remarkable actor who plays him, that seems to be the grounding force upon which all the major aesthetic choices are made. His presence, his rhythms, the curious variations on surprise, joy and resignation that he conveys through the slightest smile, narrowing of the eyes, or peculiar hesitation, imbue The Necessities of Life with its emotional textures. Ungalaaq’s charismatic visage will be familiar to those who’ve seen him as the titular hero in the magisterial Atanarjuat (2001) or as Nuqallaq in The Journals of Knud Rasmussen (06). He’s in danger of becoming the exclusive face of the Inuit in the movies, but until there’s room for more, I can’t imagine a better face to be focused on, learning from, and having a good time with.