|
The world belongs to the elements, says Robert Flaherty, all people can do is dwell on them, bravely and precariously. The Aran Isles, "three wastes of rock" off the western Irish coast, a jagged setting governed by an Atlantic that gives and takes. Docking a rickety vessel is an arduous adventure, the Man (Colman "Tiger" King) and his fishing expedition barely make it back to the shore, "a great drenching" for all. The Wife (Maggie Dirrane) balances cradle and furnace, the Son (Mickleen Dillane) plucks a crab from a pool of seaweed and stashes it in his cap, later it becomes bait at the end of a line casually dangling off the side of a precipice. Humanity's awe at Nature and the need to conquer it, land but no soil (a tiny figure hammers away atop a mountain of stone) and waters crystalline one moment and impenetrable the next. A basking shark provides the filmmaker with the ideal behemoth, its fin circles the bobbing raft but the beast is nevertheless defeated by diligence, harpoons, and dogged montage. (The beached carcass fills the screen as the islanders rush to celebrate, it dissolves to a long shot of a fire lit under the cauldron on the rugged horizon.) Grayish severities and overpowering set pieces, like Nanook a canny mélange of observation and recreation, "documentary" drama and truth flowing from the subject as well as the camera's two-way contemplation. "Oh we're in for the long haul now." The unchanging sea, as Griffith would have it, Powell's The Edge of the World, Visconti's La Terra Trema, Shindo's The Naked Island. Foam, wind and silhouetted forms in furious abstractions at the close, a low-angled portrait of crag and brine and sky and, as always with Flaherty, lives at the center. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |