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.