I finally managed to see a film that I’ve been meaning to watch for some time- Alpha. The film isn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it provides some much needed animism in Western cinema without catching “Dances With Wolves Syndrome“.

I enjoyed the film quite a bit, and apparently other people have, too. It was released three months ago today and it’s still playing in a second-run theatre nearby despite the hordes of much more famous films processing through said cinema.

I don’t typically write about films here unless there is a specific reason, and this is no exception. In light of Sarenth’s “Thinking on Polytheism and Media” from last Sunday, I thought it worth calling out a counterexample to the monotheistic (3 trailers before Alpha) or atheistic films we are bombarded with.

While, as Vox rightly calls out, Alpha is basically a boy-and-his-dog story, it is something much more significant.

It is a story about indigenous Europeans being, well… indigenous.

The entire film is voiced in a fictional language derived from linguistic reconstructions of the time.

More importantly, the religious practices of the characters in the film are reasonably consistent with other hunter-gatherers we know about. They honor their ancestors. They have a complex and internally-consistent worldview that includes those ancestors and their contributions to the tribe and to intertribal society.

In spite of this, they are portrayed as emotionally-competent human beings- something Hollywood traditionally dislikes doing with so-called “primitives”. Contrast Clan of the Cave Bear or Quest for Fire, for example.

To be sure, the characters are tough, even brutal, but they also weep, give comfort, and hug in ways that many modern men could learn from.

While the film does not go into the subject of gods at all, we are presented with non-human characters in the form of landscapes and animals who are shown to us in ways that reinforce that they have agency of their own.

Watching the film today was extra-topical, since I just read a 2017 article about how cats basically domesticated themselves.

Obviously, the film is fictional and the wolf’s character arc is severely compressed to fit into a film. But the wolf HAS an arc. The wolf has agency, an agency that the main human character generally respects.

The entire plot of the film is set in motion by the actions of a bison. Said bison is consistently portrayed as a powerful, intelligent, and worthy of respect and awe. Indeed, the cinematography presents the hunt almost like a battle between two tribes- one human and one bison:

In this context, the bison’s vengeance is not the fury of a dumb animal, but the Achillean rage of a fully-realized non-human character.

It is this implicit animism that I was looking for in Alpha, and thankfully, the film delivers.

There are other small details, too. For instance, the village shaman diagnosing a condition in a species she’s never treated before. To some, it would be bad writing. But it’s shown as a process, a combination of unseen revelation and practical healercraft.

Sure, there’s always room for improvement and the film does make some missteps. For instance, it occasionally rides the deus-ex-machina bus in ways that aren’t shown as being tied into the on-screen animism.

That said, it was a pleasure to see a respectful portrayal of traditionally-animistic Europeans (who aren’t saving Magical People Of Color from other Europeans).

In organizing the Hearthingstone Polytheist Leadership Conference, I’m thinking about arranging some side showings of movies that we might want to encourage the faithful to see.

Alpha could very well be on that list.

Alpha is now available on disk and will probably be streaming soon. You may still be able to find it in some cinemas as well.

-In Deos Confidimus