Customer Reviews

Man of Aran [VHS]

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At last! Man of Aran is one of the true greatest documentaries ever made. Like Nanook of the North (Flaherty), Olympia (Riefenstal), The River (Lorentz) and many others, this is a key work in the history of documentary films.

Now about the film itself: shot for two and a half years on the irish coast, Man of Aran follows the lives of a group of irish fishermen: their constant struggle for life in a sea full of dangers. The cinematography is simply breathtaking. I simply cannot remember another film that has ever captured the sea with such a poetic feeling of greatness and power. Like most of Flaherty's films, this is a labour of love and devotion.

It is incredible that a film like this was made nearly 70 years ago!! It has a technical brillance and a dazzling style that puts it over any other film made at sea. This film shows like no other the unbelievable battle men undertake against the sea. Death, life, storms, winds... and above all, love for the sea.

This film is a true documentary experience like no other (talk about the power of the images...).

This DVD edition has a fantastic pack of extras. Two documentaries (one about the film, other about Flaherty himself). Photos and lots of great information about this landmark film. The image is very good (considering the age of the film) and the sound is very good. I replaced my VHS copy (it had a poor picture - full of damages). This is a great DVD edition. If you already know the film, this is a great DVD to have and treasure. If you don't know the film yet, give it a try for it is a true gem.

"Man of Aran" may strictly be no documentary, but it is very real. The hard life of the people of the Isle of Aran is portrayed in its full harshness and splendor. Of a sort.

Robert Flaherty, director of acclaimed documentary "Nanook of the North," brings his same authentic eye to this struggle of man against nature, and how people can claw out an existence in even the harshest of climates. His camera makes you believe his story, as does the unaffected dialog and ability of his subjects.

Unfortunately for Flaherty, the daily life struggle of the Aran inhabitants was not raw enough, so he brought their lives about 90 years into the past, into the realm of harpoon shark fishing and suicidal egg hunting near towering cliffs. In order to resurrect this past, he located islanders who remembered the old ways, and knew the skills necessary to achieve his vision. In this way, Flaherty is authentic, using the elder residents to bring their childhood to life again. But it was not modern Aran.

This DVD is fantastic, bringing not only the original docu-drama, as well as several supporting documentaries regarding the making of "Man of Aran," about Flaherty himself, and several interesting dialogs about the film. One could not wish for a more complete package.

Man of Aran (the extra features aside) stands as a landmark film, a beautifully-shot evocation of the desolate west Ireland coast, part documentary, part fiction. These are actors, but the man, woman and boy are placed in timeless places and activities -- the physical labor and danger very real -- whether it's trying to spear a shark the size of their boat, or trying to extract themselves and that boat from an angry sea, or scratching a potato bed from rocky soil and making the soil in the process. Flaherty is as painstaking as these people, showing a very real process of creating a potato bed out of nothing but rock.

It's worth noting that film was still just emerging from the silent era then, and Robert Flaherty apparently filmed a silent film and then masterfully added sound -- there's very little dialogue (other than incidental). The repeated footage of the sea breaking on that cliff-lined coast conveys all of the power and danger of that surf. (The print seems of good quality.) The documentaries on the DVD show just how primitive the cameras and other equipment were -- indeed, the four documentary featurettes tell much about the difficulties and limitations of film production of the day.

The documentaries also put the film in perspective, returning to a much-tamed Aran of a later day. The interviews with former cast members and other islanders can be touching and genuine.

Possibly Robert Flaherty's best film, and the DVD is a worthy vehicle for it.

No movie better illustrates the tenuous, symbiotic relationship between brute nature and human endurance than Robert Flaherty's hauntingly gorgeous "Man of Aran." Flaherty, director of the classic "Nanook of the North" and father of the documentary form, shot "Aran," his first sound feature, over the course of two and a half years, casting heroic locals in key roles and training his camera on the rugged, magnificent environment in which they eke out their survival. "Man of Aran" is pure visual poetry, astounding and unforgettable.

This gripping 77-minute film holds us spellbound and captivates our imagination as much as almost any other work in the history of cinema.

Yes--it's because of technique; and yes--it's because of the artistry, because of the the craggy feel of the Aran Isles and the hard-scrabble looks of the locals pressed into service as actors by the brilliant documentarist, Robert Flaherty.

But there are deeper reasons, too. We have an inner need to glorify and dramatize the hardships of our ancestors and of those who have come before us. This mythmaking process--for myth it is--is an essential way in which we define ourselves and place ourselves in human history.

And the Aran Isles occupied a central place in the mythmaking that allowed the Irish Republic to define innate strengths and assert its identity, independence and nationhood.

As William Butler Yeats stated: "We desire to preserve into the modern life that ideal of a nation of men who will . . . remember always the four ancient virtues as a German philospher (Nietzche) has enumerated them: first, honesty among one's friends; second, courage among ones enemies; third, generosity among the weak; fourth, courtesy at all times whatsoever . . ."

Yeats and Lady Gregory, concerned to engender a foundational mythic drama and poetry for modern Ireland, sent John Millington Synge to the Aran Isles to live among peasants and capture the cadences of their speech and learn their outlook on the world. That advice became a turning point for Synge, both of his life and career. Out of it came the book of his experiences there The Aran Islands (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics) and his great 1904 one-act play Riders to the Sea.

Man of Aran is a continuation and new beginning in film of this creational myth. It enlists and captures all the energy and drama of myth-making and brings it forward in time so that audiences today can share it and experience the emotional power.

Man of Aran captures in a short space drama, tenderness, struggle against the elements, the relationship of men and women to nature, destiny and ultimately death--all the greatest themes of literature and art that transcend in space and time the making of the early Irish Republic.

Great art arrests the motion of life by artificial means holding it fixed in time so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it (or hears it if it is a poem or a song), it moves again since it is life.

Great art paints on the "big canvas" of human destiny. Truly effective propaganda and myth (like Shakespeare's history plays) are subtle, and transcending their original purpose, carry the audience along to a higher plane no matter what the era.

Transcendent art is not didactic, but rather, kinetic--precisely what Flaherty achieves in Man of Aran, created over 70 years ago.

I wouldn't call this a documentary because although it was filmed using actual inhabitants of Aran and documented the rough life of the people there, these people were cast in the parts of "the man", "the woman" and "their son" and the narrative was staged, much of it actually showing the people doing things that by 1931 when the movie was filmed, the island people were no longer doing. However, this is a breathtaking film that takes a central theme, the struggles with nature of the people of Aran, and depicts this theme in a hauntingly beautiful film that was groundbreaking for its time. This is an artistic masterpiece.

Black and white docudrama of what it was like to scrape a living off the barren coastal islands of Ireland. Story is scarce, sound is almost indecipherable, but if you watch the actors, (locals hired for the film,) they wade waist deep into the icy Atlantic breakers without even flinching, it's an every day thing for them to risk their lives to gather a torn net or pull a boat through the huge waves, just to glean enough to keep their stomach full. I was on Aran, recognized some of the settings, life is tremendously better, now, but you see why they still consider someone not of the island families an outsider, no matter how long they've lived there.

Man of Aran DVD directed by Robert J Flaherty is an interesting piece of social history. It was filmed in the early 1930s over a 3-year period. Man of Aran was produced and marketed as a documentary, but much of what was filmed was staged by locals who were paid to do certain jobs or scenes. However the scenes were true life events in the life of the people of Aran (except that the hunting of sharks had died out 50 years before Flaherty arrived on the scene)- and they led a hard life on this remote Irish island.

Nonetheless, it is a good movie based around 3 central character who are portrayed as a family.
Hard working lives from a bygone age

"Man of Aran" is not best described as a documentary. It may be a document of sorts, but what it is most true to is Flaherty's poetic vision, rather than the actual lives of his subjects. The film - despite its two years in the making - tells us very little about the "characters" ("the man" of Aran is a universal man). They are essentially figures in a landscape - silhouettes, as often shown, set against a cloud-billowing sky.

But the film is still a wonderful thing. The elemental struggle it depicts is powerful and timeless. (One is reminded of the Japanese film "The Naked Island", though that is more of a character study.) Certainly something of a former time and way of life, now gone, has been preserved for us, and this should be celebrated. The film, nevertheless, is quite short and consists of only a few sequences (again surprising, considering how long it took to make) - a point that gets lost in some panegyrics.

This DVD includes a number of interesting features. One introduces some of the people seen in the film, forty years later. Another which I found especially interesting was on Frances Flaherty - the film-maker's wife and collaborator. What a fascinating individual she seems to have been: a genuine, New England free spirit.

Very interesting. Considering how long ago it was made, the photography is great. And, the lifestyle of these people, WOW. I'm glad I got to watch it.. But, as a heads up, I don't think your kids will appreciate it.