13: Nanook of the North

 1922/US  79m  Dir: Robert J. Flaherty

Documentary

Nanook of the North is an early documentary made at a time before the concept of a 'documentary' didn't even exist. It depicts the life of an Inuk man, Nanook, and his family, and shows their lives living and surviving in the Arctic. 

It should be pointed out that much of the film is staged. Nanook was actually called Allakariallak and the woman we are told is his wife in the film was not. Many of the sequences in the film are staged to one extent or another with several exaggerated for comic effect. We see Nanook hunting with a harpoon despite the fact that Allakariallak used a gun and everyone wears traditional clothes rather than the more modern ones they really wore. Actually though the staging doesn't matter too much because we still see the people in the film successfully hunting with a harpoon, building igloos and generally showing what life as an Inuit was like. By the early 1920s when the film was made the traditional life was beginning to change and the film serves as a decent picture of what Inuit life was like for thousands of years. 

Even now this would be quite a challenging film to make but you have to admire Robert J. Flatherty making this when he did. One man with a sizeable camera in the challenging conditions of the Arctic and yet he did a great job here. There's an attempt to shoot it in an interesting way and the film is well stitched together and rarely lingers on one sequence for two long, something which could really make you lose interest in a silent film. 

The intertitles are really important to this film and do a really good job of explaining what we are seeing on screen and also pointing out little details that could easily get lost in the black and white footage. I also thought they were really well written and add some artistry to the descriptions, making them poetic rather than simply functional.

On the whole the film is positive towards the Inuit people, admiring their strength and tenacity. Despite this it still somehow manages to give make their lives feel quaint and suggest they lack the sophistication and intelligence of white people. The film very much gives us the voice of the filmmaker Flatherty and we never hear the voices or views of the Inuit people themselves- even if it had shown us some Inuit culture it would have at least begun to do this but it fails to do even that. 

Were this a modern documentary than I'd have serious concerns about this but I think it's best appreciated in context as an early documentary made with limited technology in challenging conditions.