Man of Aran

When you see these people scrounging for a basketful of soil, you just want to yell at the screen "MOVE SOMEWHERE ELSE", but one still admires their resourcefulness and determination. If you've got a thing against watching guys in boats, you should probably skip this movie. Flaherty overestimates how long these events can be interesting. But the photography and editing is first-rate, and it mostly manages to be engaging. Flaherty's work isn't really my bag, but I usually get something out of it.

The images are beautiful and the people could be interesting, but frankly there's only so many minutes of waves crashing and mundane daily tasks I can take. If it had been half this length, or filled with more facts about these people's lives, I would have enjoyed it a lot more.

Stunning cinematography does a lot of the heavy lifting to make up for an otherwise middling semi-documentary. Like Nanook of the North, this is a mix of documentary and fiction that probably only somewhat resembles what lie was actually like on the islands. Flaherty especially does a great job of capturing the violence of the sea, which is a character in its own right. It really could have used more context.

Ano de Centenário de André Bazin: Repassando os filmes citados em Qu'est-ce que le cinéma? Filme #34 Se existe uma certeza nessa vida é que este filme inspirou Michael Powell a fazer The Edge of the World três anos depois, é evidente a influência tanto no tema quanto na composição de imagens.

The tacked-on dialogue was pretty awkward and annoying at first, but I got used to it half way through. There are parts of the film that are interesting and the shark-hunting can get pretty exciting thanks to some solid editing, but generally the film is boring and I don't really understand why people think it's so important.

Flaherty is at it again. This time off the west coast of Ireland on the Aran Islands. Never one to let facts or reality get in the way of a good story, the pioneering filmmaker attempts to reinstate old practices to spice up the narrative. The film was originally silent with the sound added later. This initially felt awkward, especially the voices, but the sound of crashing waves certainly complemented the fierce images of the Atlantic. Remember, a good place to keep a crab is in your hat.

Star Rating: ★★★★★

Depiction of rough life in the midst of inhospit natural wonders make it watchable. There's also the lensing of the seas, but you are robbed of way too much by the fact that the movie was shot as a silent, and sound was added later. Story irrelevant.

native islanders storm over savage seas and climb into cavernous chasms in search of food and soil. sort of. not so much a documentary as an 'authentic' dramatisation, so it lacks the detail and reality of an actual documentation. it also lacks biological and geographical information, a psychological sense of what it's like to live on this island, or much of anything really. without the title, these people could be anyone, simply showing us how they do their gardening. i fail to see the point.

Robert J. Flaherty returns with the semi-silent documentary story he's know for, just like his praised "Nanook (1922)". This time he's spent time on the hard Irish land of Aran Islands filming the locals do their everyday work from fishing in the ruthless sea to making soil to grow food. The documentary is clearly shot as a silent, but awkwardly added sound and dialogue on top. This documentary lacks variety. Shot after shot of the hard hitting waves kind of gets on your nerves after a while.

#355

Part way between Nanook of the North and Naked Island, but a simpler movie. As with Nanook, Flaherty was more concerned with trying to recreate the hardships of the pre-modern indigenous way of life, from many decades before, than with documenting the participants' real lifestyle at the time the film was made. It has some memorable moments and nifty editing for its time, but the ending doesn't work as well as it should.

One of the earlies film that I have seen to use fast cutting technique so extensively. Overall, editing is top notch here. Black and white photography is nice too, but this movie really should have been shorter. Just too much waves for too long. The version that I watched had post-rock soundtrack by British Sea Power, that was way too intrusive.

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# 322

Honestly, I found it dull.