Robert
Flaherty is considered the father of documentary filmmaking. With Nanook
of the North, he not only launched the modern film genre, he introduced the
ethical questions that continue to dog non-fiction filmmakers. The legacy of Flaherty and the relatively
small handful of films he actually completed is explored in Mac Dara Ó Curraidhín’s
A Boatload of Wild Irishmen (trailer here), which screens as
part of this week’s Robert Flaherty series at the Anthology Film Archives.
Boatload opens with the
dramatic closing scene of Flaherty’s masterwork, Man of Aran. Struggling
against a powerful surge, the salt of the earth fishermen fight their way to
shore. Flaherty did not just happen to
be in the right place at the right time to capture the action. He either sent them out into the roiling
tide, or they volunteered to go.
Accounts differ, but everyone seems to agree the money Flaherty was
offering played a role. Even then it
would not have been much by Hollywood standards, but to residents of the Ireland’s
hardscrabble Aran Island, it was significant.
Indeed,
Boatload’s various on-screen
commentators make it clear staging scenes was a major part of Flaherty’s
working method. Opinions regarding the
Irish-American filmmakers appear to be mixed at best amongst contemporary Aran
Islanders and Irish film scholars.
However, criticism of authenticity is largely based on current standards
of documentary filmmaking, which are rather selectively applied.
Ó
Curraidhín paints a picture of Flaherty as more of an adventurer than an
auteur. Rather than Jacob Riis, P.T.
Barnum would be better considered his forerunner. So what if he did stage a scene or a dozen? It was for the sake of a good show. In contrast, when recent documentaries like Gasland play veracity games, it is
far more serious, because they are advocacy broadsides, arguing for punitive measures
targeting specific companies and industries.
Clearly,
Flaherty was not a take-only-pictures-leave-only-footprints kind of documentarian,
as the interview with his Inuit granddaughter fully attests. Yet, the Samoans still regularly screen Flaherty’s
Moana, enjoying the sight of their
ancestors on-screen, even if the episodes they are recreating were from
generations before them. Obviously, the
point is there are many different ways to come to terms with Flaherty’s small
oeuvre.
