The film is not technically sophisticated; how could
it be, with one camera, no lights, freezing cold, and everyone equally at the
mercy of nature? But it has an authenticity that prevails over any complaints
that some of the sequences were staged. If you stage a walrus hunt, it still
involves hunting a walrus, and the walrus hasn't seen the script. What shines
through is the humanity and optimism of the Inuit.
Robert Flaherty is considered
to be the one of the founding fathers of documentary film. The term documentary
itself was first used in a review of his first film Nanook of the north by john
Grierson.
Grierson states that “Flaherty’s films are not just
moving pictures. They are experiences Flaherty is a country, which having once
seen one never forgets”
Nanook
of the north was first released in 1922 and was quite successful with movie
goers
Being the first feature length documentary it appealed to a growing
audience from seeing familiar setting in the Lumiere brother’s early film to an
appetite for unfamiliar location and travelogues. It also would set the
groundwork for future documentaries to go by. Nanook of the north is a film about an Inuit hunter and his family as
they battle the elements in the Hudson Bay region of Canada. Nanook of the north is the
best known of all the silent era documentaries. Part of a series covering the
topic of humanity against nurture the
dangers of nature and the struggle of the communities on the edge of existence.This series included man of
Aran.
Nanook of the north
Flaherty first visited the
coast of Hudson Bay in 1910 to 1916 on behalf of mining companies to help plot
out railway lines. Thatwhere he filmed the countryside and filmed Eskimo
communities becoming well acquainted with them and their customs. Flaherty’s
idea was to make a film in collaboration with the local communities. After getting sponsorship from a fur company he
spend from august 1921 till august 1922 documenting and reconstructing the
daily routine of a hunter named Nanook and his family of native hunters as they
travel, fished and hunted in the harsh environment of the eastern coast of the
Hudson bay.Flaherty Represented the Eskimo community as a noble race living
simple free lives. That exists in isolation from outside influences. He had to portray them as a primitive utopian
in order to get across the romanticism of a strange wonderland that up until
the film release only a handful of people had ever seen.
People over the years have
come to criticise Nanook of the north pushing the idea that it is not a real documentary
because moments in the film are staged. Everything is set-up in Nanook it has
to be Flaherty only had a year to make the movie he had to make sure he got
plenty of footage to use and to make sure that there is conflict because a
documentary needs conflict. Conflict is what keep viewers engage to what there
watching. What is the conflict Nanook of the north? The fact that everything
Nanook does he has to do right or everyone dies. Don’t kill the seal, they die.
Don’t build the igloo before dark, they die. So even though Nanook of the north
is stage in no way is it false. For a documentary to be interesting it must be
constructing well and also has to be true.The only thing that
would actually be considered false would be that Nanook wife in the film is not
his wife. She was actually Flaherty common law wife.Also because the film was funded by a fur company the opening shows them
selling fox pelts to fur merchants.
In two of the most famous scenes from the
movie, are the one that involved the hunting of the seal and the walrus.
Flaherty asked the hunters to use harpoons instead of the guns they would
normal used to make the sequences more exciting. A quote from Flaherty telling of when he was explaining to them that
they may have to give up the kill if it interferes with the film. The Eskimo
community had no problem with the use of harpoon even if it did mean that they
could lose the catch and run the risk of going hungry. They came back and told him “yes, yes, the
film will come first, not a man will stir, and not a harpoon will be thrown
until you give the sign.”So how much of those scenes are actually false? None
really, because even they made changes to how they would normally hunt they still
hunted and kill the animals. We still see them hunt and kill the animal and use
their fat for fuel.But close to the end of the film in one of the scenes there a
moment where the dogs start attacking each other and Nanook and the others have
to separate them and untangle the ropes to the sled. This scene is a lot more tense
then the others because the mood of the film has change. there is a real
concern for everyone safety because the dog fighting has delay them greatly and
it starting to get dark, and if they don’t get back to the igloo before dark
they wouldn’t have been able to find there was back and would have frozen to
death. This highlights the fact that even with staged event of the walrus hunt
their still a threat to their lives. In fact at the beginning of the movie
we’re told that after the filming was over Nanook die after failing to return
from hunting trip and froze to death. Flaherty never tried to glamorize
Nanook lifestyle and he didn’t need to as
Nanook was always showing off to the camera look at how good of a hunter I I’m,
look at how well I care for my family. In the end Flaherty made sure to direct
the film showing the Eskimos life from their point of view not from his.
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article
Cinema year by year David Thomson
No comments:
Post a Comment