August 4th, 2009 by Chris Eng

Picture of Light
Director: Peter Mettler
(Microcinema)
 

Most documentaries have a straightforward mission. They shoot footage of something and intend to present to you the thing’s reality. It’s a visual dissection, stripping mystery from the subject in a clinical manner. Picture of Light is a different type of film. Ostensibly about the aurora borealis, the documentary follows a film crew to Churchill, Manitoba where they attempt to film the Northern Lights. What emerges, though, is a much more enigmatic piece which explores the landscape of the north, the psyches of the people who live there and the lights themselves. Despite the fact that an astronaut is filmed in the space shuttle giving an explanation of the phenomenon, his words still do not fully concretize the footage and the lights playing across the screen appear to owe as much from Inuit folk tales as they do from science. Science’s hold over winter on the tundra seems tenuous at best and as sparks shoot through the air inside a train car the elements willfully defy any attempt at rationalization.

There is certainly breathtaking footage of the aurora contained in Picture of Light, but almost more notable are the snapshots of humanity not often seen—of people living on the edge of civilization (the edge of the world, as they put it). People who develop a symbiotic relationship with their dogteam (without one, the other will die), and people who will put a bullet through their exterior wall to watch snow seep in through the knothole and develop in drifts across the floor, simply to relieve the monotony. And then there are the scenes of the frigid snow, the endless cold, the trackless waste, impermeable and unstoppable, majestic and terrible in its own right, possessed of its own very real and unpredictable personality.

Picture of Light is a singular film, haunting and evocative, not explicit in any regard. It shows you what the landscape has to offer, then leaves you to your own conclusions. Perhaps it’s best to accept its offering without putting too much weight of explanation on it, perhaps its best to appreciate the north for what it is without trying to unravel its mysteries.