HNC Photography, IFC - Coursework, Introduction to Film Culture Blog, Part three - Fact or fiction? Truth or lies?, Project 3 - Ways of seeing
“Nanook of the North (1922)” vs “The Last Trapper (2004)” vs “The Village at the End of the World (2012)”
Excercise 3.4 ask to consider the 3 films together as a representation of the genre of constructed observational documentary and while I feel that that are all good movies and have reviewed the individually everyone has its strengths and weaknesses.
When you read into the history of “Nanook of the North”, the illusion to a degree is stripped away. It’s clear that the film is almost fictional in its portrayal on the Inuits in 1920’s Canada. The family was constructed and costumed in traditional clothes that they no longer wore and filmed undertaking hunting practices that in reality the no longer did. However, the film is put together in such away even to a modern audience the deception is not evident.
It how it was put together this clearly make “Nanook of the North” a direct peer of “The Last Trapper” which I feel personally is the weakest of the three films. As I have mentioned in my earlier review, it feels more like a badly acted movie than a documentary. Like “Nanook of the North” the photography is stunning, and it puts forward the subject matter well, but the dramatization, wooden dialogue and overly dramatic “inner voice” voice over weaken the overall film. However, perhaps it is just that this, not a silent movie that is making it superior to it 1922 predecessor. If we could hear Nanook, I’m sure we would just be as stilted.
Village at the End of the World is much more contemporary and reflects the social attitudes of the community compared to the world as a whole much better than either of its predecessor. The previous film appears to be more structured toward the landscape, the Human interaction at the sideline to it whereas in “Village” it is the villagers social problemds that are the subject matter and the landscape is the bit player.
I think this is a way of film culture has evolved from showing us visually something we have not seen before but to showing is now something social we have not seen before – the real effects on peoples lives that isolation brings.