Audient Authentic: Nanook of the North

This is the first in my new 2020 monthly viewing series, in which I’m watching classic documentaries from before 1990 that I haven’t seen.

Welcome to the new series, and welcome to the movie that actually inspired it.

I had noticed Nanook of the North being available on Kanopy some time ago, and thought it was kind of funny that I had never seen it before, it being such a seminal film in the history of cinema, and in the history of documentary in particular. And it’s not like I only belatedly became aware of it. I’m pretty sure it was at least referenced if not fully discussed back in my Art of the Film class by my teacher, Mr. Brown. That was 1990, my senior year in high school, and the very year I think of as having gotten into cinema, in large part because of that class. That’s also why it’s the year I’ve chosen as the upward cutoff for movies I will watch in this series.

But indeed I had not seen it, and within six months of adding Nanook to my viewing list on Kanopy, I thought, “Why not make a series out of it?”

Hence Audient Authentic was born, and so, this made a logical first entry.

Before I started watching Nanook I thought it was a shame I had not waited two more years to think of this series, as it would have allowed me to watch Nanook in conjunction with the 100^th anniversary of its release. But the best time to put any good idea into action is now, so Audient Authentic couldn’t wait. At least I watched it on January 22^nd, which felt appropriate for a movie from 1922.

Another thing about seeing a movie from 1922 as my first movie is that it will allow me to tackle this series chronologically, at least potentially. While that has some tricks to it, like my ability to source the movies in question and not getting ahead of myself, I think it’s a worthy goal to try to start out that way and see how I go. I’ll attempt to progress through the decades and I won’t get to movies from the 1980s, for example, until the autumn. I know the second movie I have in mind will conform to this strategy, as it remains in the 1920s, but I’ll tell you more about that later on in this post.

First off I wanted to say that I loved Nanook. It’s a joyous celebration of the day-to-day successes (most often) and failures (rarely) of an Inuit man and his family. The rare failures also seem joyous as the title character always has a huge grin plastered on his face. Whether he was playing to the camera or whether this was an accurate representation of his true outlook, I don’t know for sure, but director Robert J. Flaherty certainly asserts it’s the latter in his opening text, as he interacted with these Inuits for long periods of time on multiple journeys to the Hudson Bay and northern Canada. The score also communicates the idea that this is all pretty joyous, though the music I heard was composed in 1998, so it can only be considered a very recent influence on the way a person watches this movie.

Despite my love for what I was watching, I gave Nanook “only” four of a possible five stars on Letterboxd. This could have something to do with my general perception of documentaries, which in the past I have tried to describe as “the documentary ceiling.” That idea was that most documentaries we see easily exceed a minimal level of quality, but only on rare occasions are they the kind of outstanding viewing experiences that stick with us throughout our lifetimes. My four stars for Nanook recognizes its importance in the history of cinema and its basic enjoyment as a viewing experience, but also, I suppose, suggests that it’s not a movie whose themes I am going to continue to examine over time, or whose filmmaking was particularly distinctive. It is a great artifact if not a “great” film the way we would assign such language to the consensus best films in the history of the medium.

The thing that may have surprised me the most about Nanook of the North is how much surprised me. I guess I figured that most of the ways Inuits live their lives would have filtered down to me over the years, but this was most certainly not the case. Among this film’s surprises:

Inuit people can fit multiple people into a kayak seemingly intended for one. My mind was blown straight off in this movie as Nanook’s family is introduced to us by them all steadily emerging, clown car style, from a kayak that seems like it’s only holding one person. By shrinking themselves into the kayak’s availability cavities, Nanook’s family could travel with him in his kayak. And not just one or two others, but three other people – one a full-grown adult – as well as a dog. It wasn’t that I couldn’t imagine they could fit, but that it showcased absolutely no sense of the type of claustrophobia that would cripple most of us in that scenario. Given how much time they spend in wide open spaces, I might have thought the Inuit would not like an enclosed space, but then again, they do spend time huddled together in small igloos, remaining in physical contact as they sleep to create more warmth. I suppose this is just an extension of that. However, it also makes for a really great way to start the movie. Kudos to Flaherty for thinking of it.

Inuit people sometimes killed their prey with their teeth. In a fascinating sequence that shows Nanook fishing, it also shows him subduing/killing his catches by biting them. You’d think a knife would be both available and a much more efficient way of doing this, but no, the teeth work just fine. I should say, in some research I’ve done since then, I’ve found that the word “eskimo” is considered derogatory because it is said to mean “eater of raw meat.” However, there can be no doubt that this is what the Inuit people actually do, as there is a later scene that shows them helping themselves to walrus before they can return it to camp and cook it, so hungry are they due to a general paucity of food options in their climate.

Inuit people can build an igloo spontaneously, in a matter of hours. I had always assumed there was something semi-permanent about an igloo, like, maybe the same family would live in the same igloo for years on end. As it turns out, if you are off on an extended hunt with your whole family and have no hope of returning to your more regular settlement, you can built an igloo wherever you are. Now, the film does not show the making of the igloo in real time, obviously, so I only had to get a sense for how quick the process might be. But it seemed like they could do it in only a couple of hours, which is pretty cool indeed.

Inuit people can also sculpt spontaneous art from the snow. This is not necessarily something I didn’t know, but something I was charmed by. There’s a moment when they make a little statue of a polar bear out of the snow. You’d expect something like that could be crude, but it was really good!

Inuit people chew boots. Some text in the film advises that sealskin boots can harden overnight, so Nanook’s wife chews his to diminish some of that effect.

Dogs can get igloos, too. If Inuit people can quickly build igloos, they can even more quickly build dog-sized igloos. If asked, I might have assumed the family pet would just huddle with them on the animal skins they sleep on. But perhaps it is more heat efficient for the animal to be protected in its own enclosure, and indeed, their pet gets his/her own igloo. Of course, the dogs that pull the sleds have sufficiently warm coats to just sleep outdoors.

I hope it goes without saying that I know this is not how Inuit people now, the present tense I used in the previous section of this post notwithstanding. But it's how they lived 100 years ago. 

Another scene I loved in the film involved them catching a baby white fox, and the way the fox playfully nips at one of the little kids who gets too close to it. I was worried they would eat that fox, so I was glad to see it survive intact – on screen, anyway.

So obviously I got a lot of nice and engrossing moments out of Nanook of the North, and I think it must have been a really amazing document for audiences who simply had no idea what this part of the world actually looked like. And even in 2020 it is opening my eyes to things I never knew about.

From a filmmaking perspective, I was perhaps most impressed about the pace Flaherty keeps going in this film. Some films from that era seem particularly indulgent and slow-moving, but Flaherty has a good sense for his viewers' attention spans, even though those attention spans would have been capable of so much more back then than ours are in 2020. He moves from segment to segment and gets the thing in at only 79 minutes, where I’m sure he would have had enough footage to make a film twice that long if he’d wanted.

I also really liked the title cards that narrate the action. While they are reflective of the sort of flowery style that was in fashion at that time, I found some of their descriptions to be more than merely flowery, sometimes crossing over into the poetic.

As a last comment, another pleasant surprise about the film is that I didn't find it to be patriarchal, condescending, or worst of all, racially insensitive. This was around the time D.W. Griffith was thoughtlessly diminishing the value of every racial minority he could find, and I'm pleased to say Flaherty did not learn from his example. The film finds these Inuits whimsical, but not in a way that I thought was uncharitable. His style suggests that he is energized by what he is discovering from them, not bemused by it, and that is indeed the right perspective to have for one of the world's first documentaries. 

Okay, off to a good start! Next month we’ll move forward only seven years to the highest ranked movie on the 2012 Sight & Sound poll that I have not yet seen, #8 on that list, Man With a Movie Camera. If, you know, you want to play along at home.