MUBI

It makes total sense that this is Herzog’s favorite movie. It has all the hallmarks of a Herzog documentary, but with less contrived drama and ridiculousness/shock value. Here we have a very simple film that depicts the way of life of an eskimo family, and yet it is completely captivating; every second of it totally amazed and entertained me. The look on Nanook’s face when he catches those fish and holds them up by the tail is priceless. Also, the music was incredibly well chosen and fitting. Part of the success of the movie is that it begs us to imagine ourselves as eskimos without explicitly telling us to do so. We really can’t help ourselves, though. We see things in the eskimo’s perspective, and everything is just saturated in otherness that we are almost mentally paralyzed by the thought of the finger numbing below freezing winds. There were at least 5 scenes that were totally unbelievably cool, including (SPOILERS) one where Nanook builds an igloo in under an hour, a scene where his whole family of like 5 or so people fit into this tiny little canoe, and of course all the hunting scenes and eating of raw meat. The physicality of the lifestyle is really eye opening and makes me really wonder about our own disconnectedness with nature. I was blown away by this movie.

la película es impecablemente hermosa. la actitud ética con la que fue filmada le añade un sentimiento sostenido a lo largo del filme que convierte a flaherty en uno de los grandes. conmovedora a cual más, con la música de juan pablo villa en vivo, se convierte en una experiencia sublime. a cerca de los 90 años de edad conserva su frescura como si esos hielos del paisaje aseguraran su eterna juvetud. esta película es uno de los ejemplos rotundos de la magia y las capacidades del cine. la fotografía es una de las señas inequívocas de flaherty y nanook no podía ser la excepción, al contrario. los rostros de los personajes, los animales, los paisajes, las labores cotidianas… sólo comparable a esa oda a la humanidad que es el hombre de arán, otro de los hitos máximos de robert

It was long considered to be the first full-length documentary ever made, but now, after revelations regarding the staging of many of its scenarios, it has become tainted by deception. This only serves to make the film more fascinating and reinforces it as one heck of an engrossing tale. It depticts the life of an Inuit couple in the Canadian arctic, and it does so with remarkable aplomb. The fact that it seems to give audiences what they want to see rather than the reality of the situation is yet another fascinating aspect.