I love this movie so much

Simply Perfect

Instant Favorite.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

"The White Dawn" unfolds at a pace that I'm pretty sure many young people will be turned off by. There isn't really much of a plot here, for starters, and the movie unfolds at a pretty leisurely pace. Also, there isn't a terrible about of development for the characters played by Oates, Bottoms, and Gossett. But I have to admit that despite all that, I found the movie fairly captivating. The movie is slow, but it has a kind of hypnotic spell that kept me watching. Also, the depiction of the Inuit seems pretty authentic - I'm no expert on Inuit culture, but it sure seemed authentic. (One interesting detail is that it shows that the Inuit didn't have some sort of paradise lifestyle - they had problems like starvation, for example.) If you are looking for a movie that is quite different than usual - both in its subject matter and its telling - this movie is worth a look.

The movie has a rather cheap feeling as it opens with a shot of a masted schooner bobbing its way through the ocean, and then a shot of a paper map of North America that gradually narrows so that you know that the story about to be told takes place on Baffin Island in Northern Canada. To be honest, that's the type of technical wizardry I might have expected of a movie made in the 1930's, but not the 1970's. And, in fairness, that's a misleading feeling. This isn't in any way a cheap movie. Apparently filmed on location, it includes some breathtaking shots of the local scene which make one powerfully aware of the barren starkness of the Arctic landscape, and an interesting look at Inuit (or "Eskimo" as the movie calls them, in the language of the 70's) culture.The story revolves around three whalers from New England (played by Timothy Bottoms, Lou Gossett and Warren Oates) who are shipwrecked in the Arctic and taken in and taken care of by a local Inuit clan. All three have very different reactions to their experience. Daggett (Bottoms) is sympathetic and grateful to the Inuit and respectful to their culture, to the point at which he considers staying with them, Billy (Oates) is hostile to his benefactors and constantly trying to take advantage of them, and Portagee (Gossett) falls somewhere in between the two. I thought the first hour of this movie was quite fascinating, but in all honesty it became somewhat repetitive in the second hour and I found myself losing focus on it. It was rather obvious almost from the start how this was going to end up, and so there was no real suspense involved to keep me focused. Having said that, the most powerful scene in the movie is probably found in that second half, in which the three castaways find a way to make alcohol out of local berries, and share it with the Inuit, which mirrors one of the tragedies that occurred throughout North America as native culture was almost wiped out. The second half also contains the best line, coming from Sarkak (Simonie Kopapik), the clan leader, who realizes that having the three with them isn't good and puts it this way: "They sleep with our women and eat our food. What else are they good for?" The conclusion of the movie is no surprise to anyone, although I did feel sympathy that Daggett (who was sympathetic to the clan) shared the fate of his fellow castaways.The performances from Bottoms, Gossett and Oates were good, but the stars of the movie were really the Inuit themselves. I can't help thinking, though, that this may be one of the rare occasions when a movie might have been better had it been made for TV. With time cut out to make way for commercials, some of the repetitiveness of the second half might have been avoided. It's an interesting movie, but just didn't keep me glued to what was happening. Overall, it's a mediocre effort - not bad, but not great, either. 4/10

1896: A motley trio of whalers -- gruff, hostile, alcoholic third-mate Billy (a wonderfully crotchety Warren Oates), gentle, humane cabin boy Daggett (a lovely, moving performance by Timothy Bottoms), and fidgety harpooner Portagee (the always fine Lou Gossett) -- get stranded in the Artic after their boat crashes against some ice. The threesome are rescued by and subsequently adopted into a tribe of friendly, helpful, religious Eskimos. Everything goes well for a while. However, the whalers' assimilation into the tribe and its customs proves to be quite rocky: they assist the Eskimos in hunting seals, sleep with numerous Eskimo women, engage in wrestling matches and knife throwing contests, are marked as bearers of bad tidings by a powerful Eskimo medicine man after a series of misfortunes befall the tribe, and make a fruitless attempt at getting back to civilization by stealing an Eskimo boat (they also swipe some fish as well). Eventually the whalers' opposing cultural backgrounds and differing ethical beliefs cause them to have a fierce, bitter dispute with the tribe, which in turn begets violent, tragic consequences for the unsuspecting trio."The White Dawn" works superbly on two levels: 1) a rousing, rugged, totally plausible and absorbing braving the elements action/adventure feature which gives the viewer a tasteful, thoughtful, utterly fascinating look at a unique, intriguing culture that's for the most part grossly ignored and under-explored in cinema and 2) a trenchant, ultimately ironic examination of the fear, ignorance and ridiculous superstitions which are key components of racism and, more revealingly, significant reasons for why distinct cultures can and do clash. Assuredly directed with a clear, sharp eye for minute details by Phillip Kaufman, astutely written by James Houston and Tom Rickman, gorgeously photographed in stunning panoramic scope by Michael Chapman and scored with appropriate elegance and majestic orchestral sweep by Henry Mancini, this cracking good yarn sizes up as a colorful, enthralling and very provocative little knockout.

I found this film to be rather dull although there was an honest attempt at portraying the Inuit as to how they lived back in the late 1800's. One thing that did actually occur was there have been many white explorers who showed up at all the Inuit shorelines. But those 3 explorers have been like all the other white explorers who didn't care one bit about Natives in general. The Inuit weren't immune to their detrimental ways. The Inuit took them in as their own as soon as they became stranded on their shores. However, it didn't matter to the 3 men. As it turned out, the Inuit had no other choice but to destroy them since they could no longer tolerate their shenanigans. But........... anyways.............. this is how I saw this film and why I gave it a 4 out of 10.