Map of the Human Heart | Jason Scott Lee, Robert Joamie

Map of the Human Heart | Jason Scott Lee, Robert Joamie | An Arctic Love Story

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Map of the Human H...

	Map of the Human Heart Jason Scott Lee, Robert Joamie Hbo Home Video, 1994 average customer review:based on 44 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The visual sophistication of director Vincent Ward (The Navigator, What Dreams May Come) pulls us through this often awkward chronicle of the lifelong star-crossed passion shared by a Canadian Eskimo boy (Jason Scott Lee, from Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story) and the mixed-race girl (La Femme Nikita's Anne Parillaud) he meets and falls in love with as a child. (A glowering Patrick Bergin is the third corner of the triangle.) Flamboyant sequences, like an amorous clinch on top of a billowing dirigible, and the heartfelt grandeur of the Arctic landscapes, are almost enough to compensate for the clunky transitions and the melodramatic excesses of the storytelling. Almost. Ward's first film, The Navigator (not to be confused with The Flight of...), is a visionary oddity that gives a much clearer indication of the way his work was heading: into the upper atmosphere. --David Chute

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Map of the Human Heart

This is one of the most poignant, touching stories ever told. Spellbinding as well as adventurous this is a movie I never tire of watching or recommending to friends who have also loved it.

An Arctic Love Story

"Map of the Human Heart" is a charming movie painted in huge brush strokes by a master. What an epic, from a tender adolescent love story, to tuberculosis in the Arctic, and then (holy boy!) it's on to the airforce and a war, a singing career, a love scene on top of a barrage balloon, and they're up in the rafters at Albert Hall during the blitz, and along the way we briefly descend into the firestorm of Dresden and see one of the best fire scenes captured on film where a man is transformed to cinders crossing the street; and it is all a story narrated by an unreliable Eskimo who wants another drink. Some folks miss the point, they compain about clunky scene transitions and plot contrivances. But they are the non-believers. If you want big cinema, an ambitious globe-spanning epic, then Ward's movie achieves greatness. Jason Scott Lee turns in the performance of his career and a young John Cusack also makes an appearance. Other Vincent Ward movies to love are "Vigil" and "The Navigator."

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"Map "stays true to course.

This movie has an interesting lead-in and is a romantic drama. It is well written and acted.

Good Movie

This is a different movie, is like a love soty I like it very much.

Interesting and ambitious but loses its way

Vincent Ward's Map of the Human Heart is one of those interesting failures that never quite live up to their potential. Its tale of an Eskimo and a half-Indian Canadian girl who first meet in the children's hospital he has been taken to by Patrick Bergin's ambiguous mapmaker and whose paths cross again in WW2 until the firebombing of Dresden brings matters to ahead may offer a wide canvas, but the director seems to lose his way and a considerable amount of audience involvement en route.

Re-edited after a lukewarm Cannes screening and boasting three script editors and more producers than extras, it never reaches the heart or emotions, with an ending that seems too contrived than inevitable while as an academic exercise the script's ambitions never seem fully realised. Jason Scott Lee gives a good lead performance and individual scenes stick in the memory - the lovers bouncing on top of a barrage balloon, the vividly realised firebombing and Bergin's chillingly piquish rationale for targeting it - but it's hard not to feel that something got lost in the edit.

Shot in 70mm but only shown in 35mm, the original 65mm negative for Ward's first cut is rumored to still exist, but the Region 1 NTSC DVD is from the European theatrical release version, though it does at least include 4 deleted scenes. Ann Parillaud fans will also be particularly disappointed to note that the striking and notorious UK poster art has not been used.

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