Drama • 14A • 100 Minutes • 2025
There are so many elements that bring a film together: music, performances, cinematography, etc. Mastering each element is like the delicate balance of pulling on each wire of a marionette, manipulating each component. That perfect balance is a rarity, and although Wrong Husband is not a perfect film, many of its elements come together in a way that brings culture, geography, and storytelling to the screen that most people have never seen before.
Famed Canadian Inuk director Zacharias Kunuk’s Wrong Husband (Uiksaringitara) covers a diverse range of genres, including comedy, horror, and mythology, all bound into a lovers-lost plot. Kaujak (Theresia Kappianaq), a young woman promised to Sapa (Haiden Angutimarik) at birth to be husband and wife, both suffer the sudden loss of Kaujak’s father, who dies just before a stranger (Mark Taqqaugaq) from a far-off neighbouring tribe appears. While Sapa is out hunting, Kaujak’s mother (Leah Panimera) marries the stranger, who takes her and Kaujak back to his tribe. When Sapa returns and learns that his future wife has been taken away, he sets off to find them. All the while, spirits help guide, protect, and sabotage Kaujak and Sapa.
To pull on the first two strings, we have music and costumes, two components that are rarely spoken of together. However, they both play a vital role in the film’s construction, grounding us in its setting and culture. The music in Wrong Husband is used like a form of punctuation, whether to add a punch or to draw out the feeling of isolation, dread, or time. The Inuit throat-singing (Tiffany Ayalik and Inuksuk Mackay of PIQSIQ) pulls you in deeper into the film. In conjunction with its score, the costumes’ authentic feel is certainly more than style. The indigenous parkas are incredibly detailed in the cold, barren tundra and do an excellent job of contrasting the blue, sunny sky with the cold, drab environment.
Swinging over to the next string, the biggest achievement in Wrong Husband is the cinematography, with wide shots and deep focus of the Arctic. Although white and nearly barren of any vegetation, there isn’t a single dull shot. In fact, the film leaves you wanting to see more of this environment, something that is rarely captured on film. What Kunuk and his two cinematographers, Jonathan Frantz and Thomas Leblanc Murray, accomplish is a look and feel that’s like somehow watching a documentary from 4000 years ago.
Where the film ultimately tangles itself up in its wires is its pacing. It’s not that it’s slow all the way through; it’s a problem of momentum. What people love about roller coasters is the build-up as you crawl to the top of the tracks, then the sudden release when you peak over and realize you’re about to free-fall, again and again. It’s jarring to have a film that doesn’t know when to speed up or slow down. There are several moments of genuine shock and awe, of wonder and confusion, but then there are moments when the film just stops, and you feel your legs start to tingle, your hands go numb, waiting for something to happen. Long stretches of daily life drown out much of the forward momentum explored through character and plot to a point where you start questioning whether they’re ever going to get back to the conflict at hand or if we’re now just watching Planet Earth. Only briefly mentioned earlier, there is a large portion of the film dedicated to mythological creatures and spirits. The spirits that cause and foreshadow much of the film’s conflict are almost always an exciting extra spice thrown into scenes, yet at times, they are unfocused and unclear, with a rubber-suited troll that stalks the characters in what sometimes feels like an afterthought, while the snippets of daily life almost always slow down its momentum.
While there is much to love and learn in Wrong Husband, the pacing of the film stifles many of its strengths. However, with many other critical aspects to the filmmaking it’s still worth seeing a side of Canada that is rarely ever captured on camera and seldom even mentioned, along with experiencing a culture living off the land thousands of years ago, with unique mythology underpinning many of the scenes. The focal point and universal feeling of lost love in this film is a sentiment that spans, and will continue to span, 4000 years in the past and 4000 years in the future.
Wrong Husband (Uiksaringitara) is nominated for four Canadian Screen Awards.
Where to Watch
Wrong Husband (Uiksaringitara) was screened at Nanaimo International Film Screening Society
Also worth checking: CBC Gem (often carries Canadian titles not listed elsewhere).
about the author
Merrick Gajdics is founder, publisher and editor of The Canadian Film Reviewer.