A recreation of a culture on the Edge. Literally. The edge of a 700-foot cliff. The edge of the sea, and the edge of land. The edge of an era. Through recreation, Man of Aran depicts the drama of pre-commercial fishermen as men in small wooden boats go out to hunt for Basking Sharks. Basking sharks are easily as big as the boat the 4-5 men captain, and using hand-thrown, hand-made harpoons it's easy to imagine the difficulty, and danger involved in wrangling one of these enormous beasts. Add to this the fact that they are rowing off the North Western coast of Ireland–not exactly a place with calm waters and warm sunshine. Prone to North Atlantic storms and unpredictable weather, the men are facing a daunting task bringing in the bask. (Terrible rhyme. I couldn't help it.)
On land, or maybe more appropriately, on Rock, the people of the Isle of Aran scrape (literally) a living from the rocky terrain. Life is hard, very hard for the people of Aran.
Or, at least it was.
Flaherty, in his second film has made a dramatic film documenting a way of life no longer entirely lived. The days of fishing like this have been over for a short amount of time. This is not told to us in the film, nor is it told to us how they make living and fish in the present. In a romantic rendition, Flaherty, with breathtaking landscapes and a cast of characters depicting a family, recreates a very rough way of life. Men out to sea for hours, a day, days. The woman (there's only one, but we assume there must be others) at home with her young eek out a living amonst the rocky coast, and pine away at sunset wondering if she will spot the men's boat coming back. It may never come back. This is dangerous business.
The influence of Flaherty is as breathtaking as his beautiful photography. He builds tension through the use of music, voice over (not narration, but seemingly the actors' voices) and tight editing. Waves crashing against the formidable rocky coast, men and women struggling to find dirt among the deep cracks of the rocky terrain (which they use to create a garden), and storms brewing on the horizon, combine with heroic shots of hearty people looking out to sea, caressed by beautiful light. The happy-go-lucky-life-is-beautiful-here-as-primitive-man has influenced all the Disney films I remember as a child. I'm reminded of the hearty Paul Bunyon type at peace, and in harmony with the animals, big and small of the forest. His wife and children happy and singing with the birds and admiring the spider's web, and cracking nuts with the squirrels. It's all there in 1934 in Flaherty's romantic vision of a way of life now passed. It seems to say: It's backbreaking, dangerous work, yet, we're all happy. Another film I'm assuming is heavily influenced is, 2001: A Space Odessey, by Stanley Kubrick. The opening scene of the monkey smashing bones set to symphonic music (I think it's Beethoven), and is straight out of the scene of the Irish family breaking rocks to make garden walls.
Flaherty's use of what seems like multiple cameras, but our professors tell us is only one, is cutting edge. Scenes from the boat of the fishing for the shark with multiple angles makes us feel that we are right on top of the shark itself. Flaherty must have risked a lot to get these scenes. Oddly, nowadays, when animals are involved in "documentary" films, there is usually a disclaimer saying something like, "No animals were harmed during the making of this film." Not in Flaherty's films. Not back then.
None of the characters are developed, and we feel no real connection to them, unlike with Nanook and his family in his 1922 film, Nanook of the North. However, I think Flaherty is not going for that, and the characters are only important insofar as they help him achieve his vision of the romance of a lifestyle of a vanishing way of live. A culture unknown to most of his viewers. Not only is the depiction of that of a culture on the edge, we are also watching film making on the cutting edge.
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