Like much of the East coast, we are experience really cold temperatures - soon to be colder! Right now it's 22 out. Yesterday we had snow showers and by this morning we had a bout 2 inches - but it was rather light crunchy snow. B cleaned the car off and we did get out to breakfast! We both bundled up. As I entered the diner I said, "I look like Nanook of the North!" Now this is something I say a lot when I'm all bundled up. I don't think most people get what I'm saying - that it's really cold out and I'm layered up to keep warm. So, I wondered, who is Nanook? When I got home, I Googled it and found he was an Eskimo (which is what I thought but wasn't sure) However, how did I know about him? Well, I'm sure it was my parents who first used that statement when I was a child.
Nanook of the North is a 1922 silent documentary film by Robert J. Flaherty. Nanook is an Inuit who with his family lived in northern Quebec, Canada. The first nonfiction work on this scale, this film was considered ground-breaking. It captured an exotic culture in a remote location. A DVD of the film was released and in 2005 was reviewed by Roger Ebert in a rather lengthy review. Part of the review states:
The film is not technically sophisticated; how could it be, with one camera, no lights, freezing cold, and everyone equally at the mercy of nature? But it has an authenticity that prevails over any complaints that some of the sequences were staged. If you stage a walrus hunt, it still involves hunting a walrus, and the walrus hasn't seen the script. What shines through is the humanity and optimism of the Inuit. One of the film's titles describes them as "happy-go-lucky," and although this seems almost cruel, given the harsh terms of their survival, they do indeed seem absorbed by their lives and content in them, which is more than many of us can say.
So, should you hear me refer to Nanook, now you know who he is! And I learned something also.
No comments:
Post a Comment