Nanook of the North is often called the first documentary, but because any length of film without a story narrative is technically a documentary, it isn’t even that. But it was a wild success and popularized what more people think a documentary is. But again, it isn’t even that. Nanook was played by a man named Allakariallak, the woman who played his wife (her name was Alice) wasn’t, and most of the scenes were staged. The Inuit people hunted with rifles and wore modern clothes, but filmmaker Robert Flaherty wanted to show a pre-industrial version of their society leading to criticism to depicting them as backwards and quaint. Still, it looked like a documentary and maybe that’s all that matters.
A fraud by modern standards but I do not hold that against the film. This is a time where the rules of film making were still being hammered out. It was very influential and gave people a vaguely accurate image of what life was like for the Inuit people. It also gave us a derisive name to call people who wear oversized winter coats. It’s in the National Film Registry, 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, and on many people’s great films list. But be warned that this is a painfully dull watch. I fell asleep several times watching it which is quite impressive for a 70-ish minute film. Nanook of the North was culturally significant and groundbreaking in some ways, but wholly uninteresting to me. I learned nothing about the Inuit people. I just learned what this famous film looked like, and, well AMRU 2.
No comments:
Post a Comment