"Nanuk of the North" is the pioneering work of the anthropological documentary genre of video recording for the history of documentary films, and has a milestone significance in the history of documentary films; for director Flaherty, he became the "documentary" The founding work of the "Father". Robert Flaherty went to the North Pole twice for 16 months, and used a camera to film primitive life scenes such as hunting polar bears with shuttle flags and raw seals. Such images are also of great significance to the study of the Eskimo population.
In the 78-minute video, Flaherty recreated the Eskimos playing against a two-ton walrus, and Nanook used his wits to hunt and kill the seals alone. In addition to these thrilling life-and-death struggles, they also use the wisdom of life to build "Igloo" to resist the cold wind, use kayaks and sleds to migrate and trek, and the warm daily life of women and children between ethnic groups. Such a film allows us to temporarily escape the hustle and bustle of industrial civilization, feel the epic of survival of a group of people in this polar ice plain, moving forward against the extreme cold, returning the value of life to the original value of survival, reproduction and the most precious human nature,
It is such a great work, however, when I typed "Nanuk of the North" in the search box, the relevant entry was not its value or achievement, but "Did the Nanook of the North starve to death?"
So far, I have continued to read the documents that have been published to reproduce the historical reality of the filming, which is exactly what I want to discuss about the anti-humanity documentary part of this film.
In fact, when this film was filmed, the Eskimos no longer used harpoons to hunt walruses, but used more convenient and safer muskets. In order to reproduce the Eskimos before "civilization", Flaherty chose to use a more dangerous The way to let Nanook pick up the spear and charge the walrus alone.
In another clip, Nanook gets up in "Igloo". In reality, "The filming needs to take place in a 25-foot igloo, and Eskimo igloos are usually about 12 feet wide. It collapsed again and again, and it was finally built. Because of the poor lighting in the house, the filming could only be done in the open air, so the igloo used for filming was finally forced to be cut in half. Get up in the show."
The beginning of the film is also ironic, with five people and a dog in a small kayak. According to the description of the Eskimo kayak on Baidu Encyclopedia and the display of the film, the general kayak can usually only accommodate one or two people. It is difficult not to doubt that the director made it through editing for its comedy effect.
What's even more unacceptable is that Flaherty's promised employment fee during filming is just to provide the Nanook family with food, which is only enough for their family's living needs. Nanook put too much energy into filming, delaying normal hunting activities, and the stock was not enough, so that the whole family starved to death in the next severe winter after the film crew left.
Such a tragedy of life was so unacceptable that I began to rethink the value of art and ethics in documentaries.
Nanook of the North is a milestone forged in life, its achievement marked by blood and tragedy. When I replayed the chapters after learning about the behind-the-scenes of the film, I kept asking myself a question, would it be okay to do it in a different way, and would it be okay to leave out some plots. If we abandon the scene of getting up and dressing naked in the ice and snow, will it affect the "reality of history", and if we leave more food after the film crew leaves or follow the family's later movements, will this tragedy of life be avoided...
The retelling and deliberate handling of comedy lost the "reality" of the documentary, while the filming method that ignored the life and health of the Nanook family and the later processing of the film crew lost the "humanity" of the documentary.
And when a documentary loses its "truth" and "humanity", what is a "documentary"?
And these reflections point to a core proposition, can documentaries sacrifice "human ethics" for "historical value"?
This reminds me of the debate in the first issue of Qi Hua Talk about whether to save the cat or the painting from the fire in the art museum. The artistic value of the documentary symbolizes the call from afar, an abstract civilization, and has the effect of enlightening and educating people in the distance on a grand historical scale; while the human ethics of the documentary symbolizes the call from the near and the figurative The transformed individual represents the fresh life that exists in the tiny present-world space.
Will you pay attention to "calling from afar" or "crying near"? If you look at this film with a "pan-moralist" perspective, it seems that a civilization that is high and distant is more important to all mankind than the fall of a family. Value, yet is life quantifiable? If you acquiesce that the artistic value of documentaries is greater than human ethics, it means acquiescing that every subsequent documentary can step on the ladder of value by stepping on the head and body of human beings, and acquiescing that the progress of all civilizations can ignore life.
Such a concept coincides with the appropriation of low civilization by high civilization and ignores the value of life. In fact, the film also has a superficial expression of this point of view. In the white shop, cheap knives and colorful candies are exchanged for Nanook's fur savings for a year. The same is true for the film crew who hired the Nanook family with cheap employment money and used an inhumane shooting method.
Documentaries are images of "people" themselves, and it is precisely because they pay attention to people that human nature, family, society, race and civilization can be extended from this. Artistic value, then the film itself loses its meaning.
The whole text ends with a sentence from Mr. Chen Ming. As the eyes of society, documentarians should convey truth on the left shoulder, morality on the right shoulder, pay attention to the human being, and write straight about the current historical events, and reproduce the true nature of history and human nature.
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