I suppose this movie will always be controversial as a "documentary", but as a narrative about primal Man vs. Nature, this is a very good film. The shots of the sea and the intertitled emphasis on it are used almost to the point of pure abstraction, as it boils, shifts, foams, slaps, storms, and retreats while the characters try to stay alive against formidable (and if the documentary were actually true, impossible) odds.
Flaherty's true focus seems to be more on the idea of the matter than the historical actuality of it. He shows these documentaries as testaments to the power of the human spirit against a world of impossible coldness and odds, and it definitely shows in the way he makes his characters small against huge landscapes and environmental effects. Still, the persistence of Man to Flaherty is heroic, and it's hard not to appreciate that sentiment in what is really a very powerfully edited and shot film.
--PolarisDiB
Flaherty's true focus seems to be more on the idea of the matter than the historical actuality of it. He shows these documentaries as testaments to the power of the human spirit against a world of impossible coldness and odds, and it definitely shows in the way he makes his characters small against huge landscapes and environmental effects. Still, the persistence of Man to Flaherty is heroic, and it's hard not to appreciate that sentiment in what is really a very powerfully edited and shot film.
--PolarisDiB