Watch Happy People: A Year in the Taiga For Free

Powerful

Best movie of this year hands down!

A Masterpiece!

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Hardy people working from spring to fall with one goal to survive the winter.

Interesting documentary on the lives of trappers and hunters in deep Siberia, along the banks of the river Yenisei, during the four seasons of the year. For instance, in summer, we see them fishing and collecting nuts and berries. In autumn, we see them preparing traps, collecting and splitting wood and hoarding food as they prepare for the winter, where the weather can be as low as -50 degrees centigrade. They have a hermit, mostly self reliant life style, living in log cabins deep in the forest accompanied only by their dogs, with minimal contact with other people. They also seem to be exclusively male. They have some modern technology at their disposal, though they also live and hunt with traditional instruments. Despite the title, they do not seem particularly happy, they look more like taciturn, silent and reserved, able to make a living with very little. The documentary also had a detour seeing the native, shamanistic, Vodka-ravaged Ket people fishing and building their boats (an interesting fact, not mentioned in the movie, is that the Ket people are believed by anthropologists and geneticists to be the closest ancestors of native Americans). Note: This has been widely credited as a Werner Herzog film, but all the German director did was edit an original Russian TV miniseries directed by Dmitri Vasyukov (he filmed them year round) that lasted four hours into 90 minutes for international release. Herzog also provides narration in his trademark German accented English, accompanied sometimes by his ponderous philosophizing.

With "Happy People: A Year in the Taiga" Werner Herzog (along with Dmitry Vasyukov and crew) once again ventures into an exotic, distant land; narrating traditional (at times prehistoric) way-of-living of the 300-odd people in the remote village of Bakhta in Siberian Taiga.The film primarily focuses on village's main breadwinners: 'trappers' who quarry in the thick of below -50 degree winter in the wilderness stretching thousands of square kilometers, across the Yenisei River flowing alongside the village. The village is almost untouched by modernity and highly independent--snow-mobile and chainsaw few of the exceptions. Inaccessible most of the year, village can only be reached by a plane, or a boat in the short-lived, appropriate spring-summer season. Herzog/Vasyukov esthetically showcase the authentic 'happiness' a human-being relishes even in absence of technology and materialistic advancements. All you need is a sense of freedom and accomplishment that folks in Taiga mostly come upon by the constantly keeping themselves constructively engaged. Instead of harming/modifying the nature, they have learned to live in harmony with it--assimilating their lifestyles around four different seasons: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter.The related blog-post has some delightful screen captures from the film covering the 4-season cycle and the specific chores set around them. Wish I could post them here, somehow! Posting sans the pictures, anyhow.Spring:-Passing on the conventional wisdom (Ski-making) -Setting up the base structure of quarry-traps -Smoking the Ski for shape and sturdiness -Canoe for fishing made of local wood -Widening of canoe using fire -Testing the new canoe and green huskies in first watersSummer: -Constructing huts for deep winter in the wilderness -Thawing of the river, Yenisei -Inherent tendencies of the Orion kicking in!Fall: -Nut gathering squirrel connotes: "Winter is coming" -Night-fisherman: fish is attracted to the fire-light -Storing supplies nearby winter hut, away from Bear's reach -Bear hibernating but rats still a threat -Wading upstream: Transporting essentials to the hutWinter:-Checking the traps for quarry Earning his keep, smells prey! -After a hard day's work returning back to a roof that might cave-in under snow -Meanwhile, in the village: Fishing Holes Returning home for New Year/ChristmasTrappers visit family during festivities, notice the husky running behind the snowmobile--he runs all the 150 frozen kilometers of the river! After a short stay with family (till Jan 6, Christmas) a trapper gets back to his wilderness for a couple more months--to his hut (that is naturally insulation using earth and dry moss) with his best friend.Thanks to Herzog, this documentary is a chance to live a dream lifestyle lot of us crave for.

Solid and straightforward illumination of the ways in which a few fur-trappers live and work year-round in the Siberian Taiga.Starting in Spring, we follow the stoic men on their seasonal routines in the village of Bakhtia on the Yenisei river. The utterly unique sight and sound of that big old river thawing and moving and creaking under the warm sun is totally sublime. With the onset of summer, the villagers participate in a fishing frenzy while fending off massive swarms of mosquitoes by rubbing tar all over themselves, their kids and their dogs. As autumn brings torrential rains, the water level rises and the trappers anxiously begin boating their heavy supplies into the vast forest. They begin repairing their traditional traps scattered throughout the expanse while re-constructing their personal wooden huts, which they will use as shelters along their treks through the deep snow.Other than one hilarious moment showing an alternatively modern fishing method, most all preparations for the long and lonely winter of work in the wilderness are performed according to very old cultural traditions. The simple and skilled construction of skis, traps, canoes, and huts from natural materials is shown with a patient fascination that draws us into a culture uniquely connected to the earth.Herzog's narration adds insight and a quirky humor to this otherwise forthright film. His patent deadpan humor -- largely deriving in his over-enunciated German accent -- and his honest admiration of these self-reliant men living off the land in total freedom from materialism and bureaucracy is refreshing, even if a bit romanticized.