Awarded with more Genie nominations than any other film this year, and deservedly so, Necessities of Life (French title Ce qu'il faut pour vivre) is a powerful film about how sometimes the desire to help overwhelms the grasps of the helpers to appreciate what truly matters. Based on true facts of what some would call Canada’s colonialist past, Necessities studies the divide between European and Native peoples when it comes to how we define what the words of the film’s title mean. Is it the comfort of home, family and tradition in spite of everything, or is it saving a life even if it means being taken away from everything else that matters? It’s an interesting question with no easy answers.

An Inuit hunter named Tivii (Natar Ungalaaq) takes his family to be checked up by white doctors on a government ship that arrives to treat the local Natives. While onboard Tivii is told that he has tuberculosis and that he must remain on the ship for treatment, before being taken south. After three months at sea, he arrives at a Quebec sanatorium where he’s given a haircut and a shave before being put in a ward surrounded by white patients, speaking a foreign tongue and being fed strange food. Tivii wonders how his family will survive without his skills as a provider as he’s looking at spending as much as two years in recovery.

It’s a tale of hopelessness, terror, confusion and desperation, and Ungalaaq makes you feel all of that. Language barriers are no problem with sub-titles, but even without them I think the film would still work just in how Ungalaaq manages to get so much across with expression and pitch. Éveline Gélinas as a sympathetic nurse is also very good, as the relationship between her and Tivii shows that common language is not an impediment to either friendship or understanding. I also liked Denis Bernard in a small role as a sympathetic priest that tries to help Tivii adapt an orphaned Inuit that’s also a patient in the hospice; some genuine laughs are mined out of their visit to the monsignor.

This proves that things aren’t all black and white in the story. The actions of the government are not driven by I think some imperialist mentality, but by the notion that they were genuinely doing all right by the Inuit by taking them far from home and treating them in spite of everything. Their self-deluded altruism may have blinded them to certain facts on the ground, but Necessities isn’t a story about the right-or-wrong of government policy. It’s the story of one man’s struggle to get some semblance of control of his situation, and whether or not he can maintain a sense of self so far from home. It’s a simply powerful story that works its magic in small and unexpected ways.

At times filled with humour and warmth and at others feeling compounded by isolation and a hint of claustrophobia, Necessities of Life reaches out from the past and across cultures to remind us how fragile we are in a number of equally important ways. Is one’s health worth a trip hundreds of miles away from home and being thrown into the deep end of some strange culture? It’s a tough question, and while I think I know my answer, it’s up to the audience to make up there own minds as to whether Tivii’s journey made him the worse for ware, or worn for the better.