I tried to watch Man of Aran but I gave up soon enough because I found its depiction of the struggle of man against brute nature waaay to romantic for my taste. The perspective Robert J Flaherty adopted in his earlier documentary, Nanook of the North, in which his crew follows a group of inuits in the icy surroundings of Hudson bay, is not radically different. Romantization of "brute necessity" appears here, too. The inuits appearing in the film are described as strong, noble and simple people who are completely at the mercy of the forces of nature.
Even though Flaherty makes it look as if he is following the group's unchanging way of life, this is not an ethnographic film - some argue that it is not even a documentary. Instead, the events in the film reflect Flaherty's own agenda. Evidently, he tries to evade all references to modern life, for example by making the characters use other tools than guns when hunting. "This is what their lives has always been like." This makes watching the film problematic, even though the viewer's aim is not to dig out THE TRUTH.
This is not to say that the film lacks fine scenes. There are plenty of them. In my favorite scene, Nanook, who is the main characters, attempts to drag a giant seal from a hole in the ice. For many minutes, we follow his perseverance. But even here, I am worried about the way the film opens up a certain way of viewing the on-screen events. The man struggles with the big mammal - but we are expected to extrapolate from him, to the Human Condition.
There were still plenty of things that impressed me. The cinematography, for example, was used brilliantly to convey the vastness of the arctic landscape.
PS: The film was funded by a fur company.
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