Never Cry Wolf, 1983, dir. Carroll Ballard. Streaming at home, Saturday, September 3.

Never Cry Wolf is one of the strangest, most beautiful and melancholy films I’ve ever seen. It will never appear on Criterion. No one will screen it in any kind of curated series. Small, boutique cinemas don’t know, and don’t care, that it exists. It stars Charles Martin Smith and Brian Dennehy and Zachary Ittimangnaq and Samson Jorah. Somehow, Disney produced it in the 80s, and cares so little for it today they allow it to be streamed wherever (as opposed to exclusively on their own service). It was directed by Carroll Ballard, who seemed content to craft a patient, moving story that would do nothing at the box office. It commits to its story, from a memoir by Farley Mowat, and trusts its stellar crew to do their jobs and leaves it at that. Mark Isham did the moody synth score that I listened to in the dark as a teenager, imagining the caribou scene in my head. I saw it in one of the worst years of my life, when I was a sophomore in high school, and went 3 times in one damp, cloudy March week to the Cinema 1 & 2 in Mt. Pleasant, by myself (already having seen it once in Saginaw with Dad and John). Then I would go home and dream about it, and feel renewed, but also with some heartache, but good, healthy heartache. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, Never Cry Wolf moved me again, and hopefully I’ll dream of it tonight.