‘Map of the Human Heart’

Vincent Ward’s beautiful and ambitious 1993 film is a startling epic of cultural seduction that tries--and often succeeds--to catch a massive chunk of our century in microcosm. Two mixed-race Inuit youths bond in a Montreal Catholic hospital school, become separated and then meet again in London during the last stages of World War II. There, Avik (Jason Scott Lee), who has become an aerial photographer, and the sensuous Albertine (Anne Parillaud) continue what amounts to a lifetime of frustrated longing (Cinemax Thursday at 4 a.m.).