Synopsis
In an Arctic village in 1931, British mapmaker Walter Russell selects 12-year-old Eskimo Avik as his guide. When the boy contracts tuberculosis, Walter flies him to a Montreal hospital, where Avik meets Albertine and is infatuated. A decade later, a grown Avik encounters Albertine again in London, where he's serving as a British combat pilot. Despite her relationship with Walter, she and Avik begin an affair.
Your Movie Library
Cast
- Jason Scott LeeAvik
- Robert JoamieYoung Avik
- Anne ParillaudAlbertine
- Annie GalipeauYoung Albertine
- Patrick BerginWalter Russell
- Clotilde CourauRainee
- John CusackThe Mapmaker
- Jeanne MoreauSister Banville
- Ben MendelsohnFarmboy
- Jerry SnellBoleslaw
Recommendations
- 100
Chicago Sun-Times
One of the best qualities of Map of the Human Heart was that I never quite knew where it was going. It is a love story, a war story, a lifetime story, but it manages to traverse all of that familiar terrain without doing the anticipated. - 100
Washington Post
A marvelous breakthrough, a film of incantatory intensity and moment by a prodigiously gifted young filmmaker. - 90
Los Angeles Times
Ward's "Map" is a wildly ambitious film and, often, a wildly beautiful one--and if it isn't quite a masterpiece, if we sense that Ward's resources aren't enough for the World War II London scenes, in the end, any flaws or lapses simply may not matter. Movies, especially ones with a broad epic canvas and international logistics, don't often get this intimate. They don't give you such a sense of nerves stripped raw, joy or misery nakedly expressed. - 89
Austin Chronicle
Spanning three decades, Map of the Human Heart is one of those rare films that illuminates a single human story, and does it so well that you're hardly aware you're watching a movie. - 80
Variety
An immensely ambitious and audacious love story spanning 30 years and two continents. - 80
Time Out
Fate intervenes at an indecent rate, serving up plenty of misunderstandings, but the mise-en-scène is stunning. Go with the floe. - 70
The New York Times
Far more memorable for the spectacular wildness of its Arctic and Dresden scenes (as photographed by Eduardo Serra) than for its uneven efforts to bind such images together. - 63
Chicago Tribune
Ward's ambitions for this project far outstripped the intentions and capacities of its screenplay.
