DVD Review: Northern Greetings
Modest Documentary on Sleepy Northern Quebec Community Uneven
Feb 16, 2009
Northern Greetings Basic Overview
In the late 1970's, when the Quebec government announced the creation of one of the largest hydroelectric dam complexes in the world, thousands of Quebecers searching for employment headed due North, for the frozen Northern taiga. These men and women spent years building what now exists today, a complex of several powerful dams housing hydroelectric generators, along the La Grande River which pours itself into James Bay.
Finding a means to house all of these hard workers, the people from Hydro Quebec created a small community about 100 kilometers east of the Cree reserve of Chisasibi, which they called Radisson. Founded in 1974, this community's sole purpose was to provide nearby housing, given the La Grande River's considerable distance from the larger populated areas of Quebec (such as Montreal), over 1400 kilometers to the South.
When the projected was completed and the workers returned to their urban lives, a handful of the populace which had found itself enamoured by the peaceful remote locale, began to establish roots in the small isolated community. Today, many of them are still there, though their younger generations are ever so attracted by the call of civilization down South, and so who's to know how many generations may live on, in this permanent community of Hydro Quebec employees, and those who joined them.
Northern Greetings Overall Analysis
This is yet another insightful, though uneven piece, co-produced by the National Film Board, likely made to capture one more of Canada's heritage moments. Director Benoit Pilon spreads his feature thin over the 94 minute running time, spending more time following specific couples and their daily routine, rather than discussing the James Bay project which brought them there, or how this project displaced the original inhabitants of the Cree nation. And so, though informative, Northern Greetings feels less like a documentary, and more like a long lost home video of a family party, and the conversations which occur within.
The film barely touches on the Cree people, with the rare exception of one family, whom we meet through its three generations. We briefly meet the older parents, who remained somewhat traditionalist, then the middle-aged son who makes a llving through photography, and the grandson who is not yet aware of his family's history and hardship. Few scenes are dedicated to the fascinating Cree culture in Northern Quebec, and so the director instead goes through long and tired chapters of the somewhat routine days the Radisson inhabitants experience. Though the tedium of working part time in an empty post office, or preparing for a wedding, or gossipping at the local hairdresser's may seem wonderfully entertaining to some, it doesn't make for worthwhile documentary content.
And so the voyeuristic feeling of impeding on this small community's mundane life, filled with gardening stories, business hardships, fishing, and other tales, make Northern Greetings a somewhat one-sided story, which skirts the interesting topics, and focuses instead on a town's current events, rather than its potentially rich history.
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