Nanook of the North

   Nanook of the North is widely recognized as a remarkable masterpiece in the history of the movie industry, since it opened a new era of documentary. In this movie, Robert Flaherty presented the traditional life of the Inuit (Eskimo) people on the screen, showing the audience how the Inuit build their igloos, hunt and other scenes in their daily life. Yet, controversy has continually arisen from discussions over whether to include it in the range of “documentary” or not. In this article, I will explain my reasons of supporting to see it as a documentary by analyzing this movie and explaining my perception of the “truth” in documentaries.
   Most of the disagreements comes from the falsehood of this movie. We can see examples from a critics’ article, saying that the clothes were “a nostalgic hybrid”, the Inuit family came into being specially for the movie, and the famous walrus hunt was also arranged by Flaherty purely to represent “the old way” of Inuit’s conventional life when the culture was absolutely arriving at “a harbinger of its obliteration” at that time(Net. 1.). Just as the article suggested, clues of a “man-made” life could be find everywhere in this so-called “documentary”.

   However, we have to understand the following point before rushing to this thought. First, the definition of “documentary” didn’t appear until the impact brought by Nanook of the North. It is this movie that unfolds a new way of scene shooting and organizing, which later developed to what we now know as documentaries.

   Second, documentaries are not constricted to the simple rule of the 100% truth of the production process. To bear a long-lasting value, it has to excel the loyalty to a true appearance by means of a mere duplication of daily lives. I think the notion of “documentary” should be a truth of multiple dimensions, including social, cultural, psychology ones. etc., through which the embedded value would be perceived, appreciated and embraced through close interpretations for decades and even for centuries. There’s no doubt that documentaries have to turn to unique techniques of shooting, narrating and editing before entering the sight of the audience, which means there definitely exists a skillful post-processing to the rough truth. Due to the above reasons, it’s not fair to deny the “truth” in Nanook of the North. As far as I can see, Flaherty endeavored to display a precious true society of the Inuit which was fading away in the far north. He should be considered as a genuine recorder of the difficulties and conventions in the Inuit society.
Just as Dean W. Duncan said in his movie review, “in making this film, Flaherty was telling a story, and from first to last he never claimed differently” (Net. 1.). Since Flaherty didn’t have any of the “documentary” idea in his mind, it is an extremely precious material not only to give us a chance to go back to that disappeared culture again, but also to be a good resource for social studies on that nation.

Reference
[1] Net. 1. Nanook of the North. (Retrieved October 28, 2014 from http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/42-nanook-of-the-north)


51Due网站原创范文除特殊说明外一切图文著作权归51Due所有；未经51Due官方授权谢绝任何用途转载或刊发于媒体。如发生侵犯著作权现象，51Due保留一切法律追诉权。