Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty, 1922): USA / France

Reviewed by Byron Potau.  Viewed on DVD.

After several false starts, Robert Flaherty, a virtual amateur, honed his documentary skills and gave us one of the crowning achievements of the genre with Nanook of the North.  It is a brutal education on surviving in the north that is sometimes hard to watch.  Though you may find it necessary to look away from time to time you cannot help but appreciate the film’s lyric beauty and honesty.

Opening with majestic images of the inhospitable north, Flaherty introduces us to Nanook and his family.  We follow them on their travels as they are always in search of food and shelter.  Nanook travels by canoe, sometimes with his entire family stuffed inside, and we are given a window into his various searches hunts.  Nanook is an able fisherman, biting his catch to death before catching another one.  He joins with other hunters on a successful walrus hunt, and, at another time, enlists his family to help him pull up a seal he has caught.  We also get a very thorough lesson in making an igloo as well as reminders of what would happen if Nanook and his family were to fail in any of their quests for food and shelter.

The seriousness of the consequences of not finding food are made known to us in the film’s opening when we are told that Nanook had starved to death less than two years after filming when he was hunting for deer.  It is this struggle for survival that lends the film its power and will make those who may look away in certain scenes understand that what was done had to be done.  There are several scenes that would cause outrage today as well as a boycott by PETA.  Yet, these things were necessary in order to survive in such a harsh climate.  The walrus hunt is particularly heartbreaking to watch as the walrus’s mate tries to pull him free.  Yet, Nanook and the others show no remorse, only delight at their catch because it means survival.  There is no room for sentiment.

Flaherty’s documentary is a window into a life that many of us will never know.  Their main objective is survival, and they only have the briefest of moments for pleasure which is found in the simplest things.  When Nanook is busy building an igloo the children take turns sliding down a slope on the bellies like penguins. 

In representing this one family Flaherty succeeds in showing us the life of these people and what it means to live their lives.  Their closeness as a family is endearing to watch and their whole existence has a simplistic beauty to it, but when we watch them, with the threat of death always so near, we know how lucky we are.

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Published:
01.22.09 / 4pm
Category:
Documentary, DVD, Films, Silent films