Man of Aran (1934)

Man of Aran is a 1934 British fictional documentary (ethnofiction) film directed by Robert J. Flaherty about life on the Aran Islands off the western coast of Ireland. It portrays characters living in premodern conditions, documenting their daily routines such as fishing off high cliffs, farming potatoes where there is little soil, and hunting for huge basking sharks to get liver oil for lamps. Some situations are fabricated, such as one scene in which the shark fishermen are almost lost at sea in a sudden gale. Additionally, the family members shown are not actually related, having been chosen from among the islanders for their photogenic qualities.

George Stoney's 1978 documentary How the Myth was Made, which is included in the special features of the DVD, relates that the Aran Islanders had not hunted sharks in this way for over fifty years at the time the film was made. Man of Aran is Flaherty's re-creation of culture on the edges of modern society, even though much of the primitive life depicted had been left behind by the 1930s. It is impressive, however, for its drama, for its spectacular cinematography of landscape and seascape, and for its concise editing.

Synopsis

The film opens with a boy crab fishing. We then observe three fishermen landing a flimsy holed curragh in the force of the wind and the huge waves. Next we see some of the hardships of mundane Aran life: making a field on the barren rocks using seaweed and soil scraped out of rock crevices, fixing holes in the boat with a mixture of cloth and tar, rendering the liver of the giant basking shark. The film follows as the men of Aran harpoon the huge beasts from their bád iomartha (a wooden carvel hulled craft), the film ends with another storm sequence where the distressed family on shore watch the prolonged struggle of the boat to land safely against the elements.