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Man of Aran
A documentary on the life of the people of the Aran Islands, who were believed to contain the essence of the ancient Irish life, represented by a pure uncorrupted peasant existence centred around the struggle between man and his hostile but magnificent surroundings. A blend of documentary and fictional narrative, the film captures the everyday trials of life on Ireland's unforgiving Aran Islands.
Release : | 1934 |
Rating : | 7.2 |
Studio : | Gainsborough Pictures, |
Crew : | Director of Photography, Additional Music, |
Cast : | Colman 'Tiger' King Maggie Dirrane Michael Dirrane |
Genre : | Documentary |
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Reviews
Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!
hyped garbage
The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.
what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.
Robert Flaherty, known as the Father of the Documentary, made his directorial debut with this look at life on the island of Aran, off the coast of Ireland. The people on the island spend their days digging through the rocks to get soil to grow crops, and also hunting basking sharks. Every step of the way it looks like a tough existence, but the inhabitants do what they can to survive.It's an impressive documentary in every sense. A number of the scenes look as if they must have been hard to film, especially when the boy climbs down the cliff. But they accomplished it. I definitely recommend "Man of Aran".The DVD includes an interview with Flaherty's widow Frances years after they made "Man of Aran". She comments on the construction of a nuclear plant not far from her house in Vermont, and worries about how safe nuclear plants are (in fact, this was a few years before Three Mile Island; since then of course, we've had Chernobyl and Fukushima).
I watched this film in my documentary film class and was bored to tears. This film is supposedly a documentary, but most of it looked staged, which is Flaherty's style. Watching people search for soil in the cracks between rocks with very little dialogue is not the most exciting thing to see on the screen, however the time frame needs to be taken into account. This was probably some exciting stuff back in the 1930s. The big dramatic man versus nature scene at the end was snooze worthy. It was, perhaps, the most boring thing I have ever sat through. Nanook of the North was a better made film of Flaherty's, however that is not a true 'documentary' either.
both allmovie.com and imdb.com call this a documentary, but that's a bit iffy. it's real footage of real people, but the action is sorta directed and the people aren't portrayed as they are in real life - the three main characters are supposed to be related, but aren't really. it's more of a documentary than "kids," which is a feature film that is shot like a documentary and most of the actors weren't doing much acting - rather they were sort of just playing themselves. maybe it's a documentary like koyaanisqatsi (or man with a movie camera) is a documentary - things are distorted or shaped by the director, but it's still real life; tough to say. enough of that though, on to the review. the photography is much better in this film than it was in flaherty's first (nanook of the north, which i also own). the black and white images are much sharper and the cinematography is far more advanced. nanook of the north was sort of an accident film for flaherty - he was in northern canada on some sort of expedition and sort of fell into being a filmmaker. at any rate, this film is a definite step up (in a technical sense) from nanook of the north. he uses montage, at least a couple different cameras, and has gotten even better at editing, making this film truly good - especially for its time (1934). i mentioned a few reviews ago that 'triumph of the will' was hardly impressing, even when taking into account the year of release. here's a film that proves my point - it was released in the same year, it's also a documentary (mostly), and it's probably ten to eleven times better than 'triumph of the will.' B+.
As a child, I saw Man of Aran in my grandfather's living room. I didn;t understand why he seemed so moved by the Man of Aran. I recently learned that Colman King (the star) was my grandfather's first cousin. Delia King Donahue was my great grandmother, and her nephew was Colman King. As far as the film goes, it is what it is, the life and times of those trying to eek out a living under very adverse circumstances.Does anyone know where I might obtain a poster(reproduction) of the movie? Yah, nostalgia)Thanks, Sue