Nanook of the North essay

The following is an essay about Robert Flaherty and his film Nanook of the North. It is titled

Have Camera Will Travel

Andrè Bazin once wrote that,” Every image is to be seen as an object and every object as an image. (Bazin 27)” He explains that every image is an object and further more an object of reality. The film image represents reality like no other art form before. A painting, no matter how detailed cannot compete against the “plastics,” because the film image details exactly that which it tries to represent. (Bazin 9) And yet, the seventh art is the only art with the capability to transparently cross beyond space, time, and dimension with fluid continuous motion. In the film world men can fly, aliens destroy earth, animals will talk, and Nanook hunts without gunpowder. In a sense there are two dimensions, the single frame image and its contents of reality, and the image in secession with another (creating the illusion of motion) displaying its fakery. Robert Flaherty’s, Nanook of the North, exemplifies both of these realities, the real and the implied.

It is important first to distinguish and separate the documentary film from news reels and furthermore the artist, Robert Flaherty from the explorers, J. Adrian Jacobsen and Robert Perry. The question is posed; Are documentaries subject to the same restrictions as news reels or news programs? Ethical news broadcast should represent an objective point of view, allowing for the viewer to decide their own judgment of the reality presented to them. News is then broadcasted, film however is exhibited. If documentaries are the objects of films and films are subjective then we can conclude that Flaherty’s film, Nanook of the North, represents Inuit people from the possible viewpoint of not only it’s director but also of its finical backers, the French fur company Revillion Frères, and that this is ethically acceptable. Robert Flaherty, though an explorer, is not the same as J. Adrian Jacobsen or Robert Perry in terms of exploration. From the article Taxidermy and Romantic Ethnography, by Fatimah Rony, we conclude that Perry and Jacobsen were kidnappers and slave owners of Inuit people, and though it may have seemed socially moral in its time, the same actions are not socially acceptable or moral in this present day. It also can not be concluded from the article whether Flaherty took part in similar actions during his production of Nanook of the North. What is known is that Allakariallak, the actor playing Nanook, found Flaherty’s filming amusing, too amusing to play serious. This lays doubt to any suggestion that Flaherty was cruel or unkind to the Inuit people. Having released Flaherty from moral accusations and his film from objectivity, the discussion of the films perceived reality in the context of the article can be more delicately administrated.

Flaherty explains that he, “Did not want to show the Inuit as they were at the time of the making of the film, but as (he thought) they had been. (qtd. in Rony 101)” This explains many of the implied realities of the film in contrast to the reality from which it represents. Allakariallak is the actor portraying Nanook, the noble savage. The name Nanook, meaning the bear, is there to give Allakariallak character as he will be the screen hero. He is introduced with direct address, a close up of his face. Allakariallak looks into the camera lens and smiles at the fourth wall. He and the audience are aware of each others existence. What is real are Allakariallak’s facial expressions, the wind chill across his cheeks, and the weathered look to his skin (this is the reality). Nanook lives in the implied reality. He is hard working much like Allakariakllak, yet Nanook lacks the knowledge to modernize. The narrative structure of the film judges Nanook and his family by demonstrating that they are primitive and not intellectual. They are filmed riding, or implied to have rid, all together contained, even the husky, in a seal skinned kayak. Rony compares this with a comedic routine performed by clowns as this moment is there only to entertain the audience. (Rony 111) In the trading scene, Nanook trades at a trading post. Nanook seems unaware of technology; he bites at a record several times, and the trader has medicine for the young child. The Inuit people are shown lacking technology and medicine. This, as concluded from the article is not real. But in Flaherty’s defense at some point in history the Inuit culture would have been without European technology and its medicine, but it is subjective to whether they had them during the time of filming.

It is also subjective as to whether Nanook erects igloos and hunts without the assistants of his wives. Nyla, really Alice Nuvalinga, is shown playing in the snow. She rides with the children, sliding, down the hill. This part is real. Allakariallak licks his knife, cuts the snow, and effectively constructs an igloo. This part is also real or can be considered reality. The reality becomes subjective in the intertitle and the juxposition of the two scenes, the playing and the constructing. Now the scene becomes Nanook licking the knife constructing the shelter as his wife Nyla cares for the children, thus takes on a separate meaning. To Rony the meaning is that the, “Western ideal of the independent father struggling to make a living for his family is implied to be universal. (Rony 114)” Had the scenes not been cut together, it would still convey the skill Allakariallak possesses in building an igloo and even more skillfully adding a window from a block of ice. Next to the images of Nuvalinga and the children adds the subjectivity of the films creator and the ideal that Rony has animosity for.

This is similar to the scene in which Nanook, his family, and the wolves all eat raw meat. There is no doubt that Allakariallak has the dexterity of a blade to cut skin from a walrus, as he is seen doing so with ease and agility. Allakariallak eats the raw flesh from the seal as does the other family members. This much is real, and is not contested in the Rony article. The wolves as well have a chance to eat and do so. The wolves snarl at each other and appear hungry and determined. Both of these images, separate from each other depict the reality of Allakariallak and the wolves. The subjective view point happens once the two are intercut with each other. Now the audience sees Nanook eating raw meat parallel with the wolves, suggesting now that Nanook and the wolves are one and the same. The implied meaning is that Nanook is animalistic and savage, but it does not contradict the reality that Allakariallak actually eats the raw meat, but merely employs that he does so just as a savage wolf. That moment is subjective. This leads Rony to say that Flaherty is, “The great humbug of falsifier of reality. (Rony 100)” And in his defense Flaherty would say that, “One has to distort a thing to catch its true spirit. (qtd. in Rony 116)”

However, examine now the beginning portion of the same scene. Nanook is seen piercing the viewing hole with his harpoon, and then subsequently struggling to pull the seal out of the water. The action is fluid; the camera does not cut away. This differs from the previous examples in that it does not rely on montage to create a subjective meaning. Nanook struggles, but Allakariallak does not, because (as we know from the Rony article) that Allakariallak is not actually pulling against the strength and weight of the seal but in reality against the strength of other film crew members tugging on the other end of the line. Though the hunt is filmed with depth of field photography, a deep focus lens, and employs the usage of the long take, the hunt is falsified and Roney makes note of this and (in a sense) criticizes Andrè Bazin for admiring it so. Bazin states:

What matters to Flaherty, confronted with Nanook hunting the seal, is the relation between Nanook and the animal; the actual length of the waiting period. Montage could suggest the time involved. Flaherty however confines himself to showing the actual waiting period; the length of the hunt is the very substance of the image, its true object. Thus in the film this episode requires one setup. Will anyone deny that it is thereby much more moving than a montage by attraction? (Bazin 27)

The fact that the reality of the hunt is fictional does not challenge the writing of film theorist Bazin. Bazin is not commenting on the reality of the scene but yet the greater illusion of reality that the scene creates by not cutting away from image to image. Whether Allakariallak pulls against the film crew or Nanook struggles with the seal. The reality is that they both struggle and the subjectivity is handed a greater sense of reality because the film refuses to cut away from that action.

This is not an argument against Rony or one in favor of Flaherty, but furthermore a reflection of the responsibilities of a documentary concerning the reality of its recording and the subjectivity of its exhibition. Had Flaherty, as a scientist and not an artist, explored the Hudson Bay and staged these scenes, the ethical stand point of his doing so would not be justified. As an artist, Flaherty was creative in filming the locations that he did and capturing what he saw. His intention may have been to record what he thought might have been (historically), and to no fault of the audience they perceived it as the present reality. Either way the vanishing primitive still exist. Allakariallak passed away two years after the films production. Nanook, since the films exhibition in 1922, by now would have passed as well. In a sense Allakariallak and Nanoonk eventually meet the same fate and the world would never have known both if Flaherty not had camera and traveled.

Work Cited

Renoir, Jean. Forward. What is Cinema? Vol. 1. By André Bazin. London, England.

University of California Press, LTD, 1967. 9-27.

Rony, Fatimah Tobing. “Taxidermy and Romantic Ethnography: Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North.” The Third Eye: Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic Spectacle. Duke University Press. 1996. 98-126.