What I think elevates this above most nature films is first the intense sense of what it would be like for a lower forty-eight kind of guy to survive in a most inhospitable wilderness, and second the witty presentation of some of the scenes. This is a story of impending loss and it is as melancholy as the cold autumn wind that blows across the tundra. Indeed, what this film is about is the dying of a way of life, not just that of the wolves, but of the Inuit people themselves who are losing their land and their resources while their young people are being seduced away from what is real and true and time-honored for the glittering trinkets of the postmodern world. Note how compactly the main issues of the film are exemplified in these four characters.
The acting by Charles Martin Smith as "Tyler" (Farley Mowat) and Brian Dennehy as Rosie, the exploitive redneck bushpilot, and Samason Jorah as Mike the compromised Inuit (who sells wolf skins for dentures) and especially Zachary Ittimangnaq as Ootek, the quiet, wise man of the north are also pluses. Here the cinematography and the beautiful musical score by Mark Isham are fine compensations. Something is always inevitably lost, but something is often gained. It is impossible to completely translate a book into a movie. A film is one kind of media with its particular demands while a book is another. The criticism that Director Carroll Ballard's film is not entirely true to the book is legitimate, but I would point out that movies are seldom if ever entirely true to their source material. People with sound-bite attention spans who need to mainline exploding cars and ripped flesh to keep them interested need not apply. (Maybe they should have clothed the wolves.) The latter complaint is the major reason for all the ranting by some "reviewers." To them a Disney film showing human nakedness seems a sacrilege and they want their bowdlerized world returned to them, and they want Disney censured and made to promise never to do anything like that again! The complaint that there wasn't enough tension in the film is also off base since this is a contemplative, even spiritual film, not a slick thriller. To which I say, so what? so what? and gee, how offensive. How sad is that? The reasons for the controversy would seem minor: first, the movie is not entirely true to Mowat's book two, it's lightly plotted and three, a man is seen running around naked in the tundra. This fictionalization of the Farley Mowat book about his Arctic adventures studying wolves is amazingly enough perhaps the most controversial film Disney studios ever made.
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