Aga

Climate change stalks whatever part of the Arctic Circle the story of Aga takes place. The film's isolated characters, a man and woman (revealed in press notes to be Yakut, from the northeastern Russian republic of Sakha) notice that the impossibly vast desert of snow and ice surrounding them gets wetter earlier every year. But they have more immediate problems. Aging, hungry, in declining health, finding it harder to do the exhausting work necessary to survive, the couple, Nanook (Mikhail Aprosimov, his character's name a nod to Robert Flaherty's famous 1922 Nanook of the North) and Sedna (Feodosia Ivanova) are obviously approaching a crossroad, with no neighbors or nearby family to help. There is Chena (Sergei Egerov), a strapping, younger fellow who drops by via snowmobile sometimes, and who proves a link to an offscreen woman we gather has shared history with Nanook and Sedna. All of those story details will work themselves out over "Aga"'s running time. But front and center is the day-to-day, quotidian experiences of the two principals against the film's stunning backdrop of harshly beautiful, lonely vistas. "Aga" takes a dip in interest during late scenes in which Nanook catches a long-distance ride as a passenger on a logging truck. The sequence takes too much time and energy but yields little, in contrast with the preceding scenes on what might as well be a glacial, alien planet. Strongly recommended.