We can get an impression of a place that we move through as a tourist; though of course that is always mediated by the fact that we are a tourist, and actually living in a place, learning and becoming a part of its daily rhythms would make us understand it differently. Arguably it could take years to understand the spirit of a location, knowing the stories of the land and the people of those stories.
Indigenous Canadian filmmaker Darlene Naponse has told stories through different modes, first a character study in Falls Around Her, then an experimental end-of-the-world love story in Stellar (a criminally underseen film). Now, she turns her distinctive eye to documentary, in Aki. But as fits with that distinction, she takes us on a journey through the four seasons in her Northern Ontario community. Without dialogue, the only sounds being those of the nature around us and the occasional (though mostly indistinct) words of the Atikameksheng Anishnawbek community, Naponse asks us to be a different kind of traveller.
While there is only so much we can learn from a film, Naponse arranges her story across a year, introducing each section with its season: Biboon (winter), Mnookmi (Spring), Niibin (summer, and Dgwaagi (autumn). It sounds simple enough, and perhaps it is in that we're going to have a general understanding of what might be happening in both the natural and human world during these seasons. But it's also deceptively complex, and oddly calming. We are enveloped in this world as if we were almost ghosts observing, or aliens set out to understand the rhythm of this group of humans in this part of the world.
It's a rare moment when I almost wish parts of this film were in 3D, or perhaps one of those 360º screens, as it feels an immersive film. The camera takes the place of an eye, but not just of the audience. At times it feels like the eye of an insect, or perhaps a bee, closely examining the flora to see where to land. A spring of pine on which we can count the snowflakes, delicate and resiliant. Sometimes it's the eye of a fish, under the water, trying to find the right path to the ocean or the breeding grounds, watching the slow current, and perhaps on the lookout for a suspicious-looking string even if it does have a tasty treat at the end.
Sometimes it is a bird's-eye view, looking directly down at that snowy ground. Is there always something specific in the frame for us to watch? No, but it's also about understanding, perhaps, this animal and how it views the world, this part of the world, as it looks for food or a place to land or nest. We're being asked to engage differently with what we're seeing, to look with more than our human 'tourist' eyes.
As noted, there is no dialogue as such. There are the sounds of nature: the flow of the river, the dripping of sap from a tree, the sniff of a bear seeking out its lunch. But there are also humans sounds, such as the ski do, the knife slicing through a rabbit as it is dressed, basketballs on a court of skates skimming across a hickey rink. These people are a part of the land, and how they live today is a part of this nature, even if it doesn't always fit what would be considered 'nature'. But it is natural to this place, in this year we are observing. There is also in certain scenes a beautiful score composed by cellist Cris Derksen, which moves between more rock and more classical, depending on what the scene brings out.
Naponse shows us some of the most beautiful of this human community, specifically a summer pow-wow, when dancers come together to show their dancing skills. There are some magnificent overhead drone shots that will make even the most drone-shot-resistant audience (i.e. me) delighted. But Naponse also doesn't shy away from show how humans, in this case settlers, have wreaked havoc on the land, with strip mining and other industries which continue to threaten the land, and all that lives thereon.
Meditative is one word to describe Aki, but that also sells it short. It is calming in its way, but it's also engaging in a way that most 'time and place' documentaries are not. Naponse has crafted what feels, maybe not a love letter as such, but more a unique diary entry into a world that few outsiders get to see, and asks us to understand it on its own terms.