When one claims to be watching a 'documentary' then it is assumed that one is watching a real process taking place in the world at a specific juncture in history. Moreover, when one reads a 'document' it is taken for granted that one engages in a deliberate consideration of facts, & not in a word jest or a jocularity of speech which takes the form of hallucination; it is, if one were to ponder the metaphysical side of it, a tension of hi-serious-ness that is taking place in the reader's mind with poignant actuality.
"Nanook of the North" is among the first documentaries in our film history, according to the common understanding of the word; that is to say, "Nanook" is not a fabrication nor even a symbolic representation of an Itivimuit man and his way of life, but the very subject matter captured in time & preserved for all ages so long as the document persists in the archives that outline our history. Not without a trace of fatalistic pathos, Nanook came to perish from starvation only 2 years after Flaherty had cut his film and made a success of it; being among the 1st documentaries, it seems to have been Nanook's destiny to have died for the filmic ideal (i.e. for his mythic identity), so that he may be replaced by the imageprint he left behind, which we are compelled anyway to approach as a trace of the living substance of his being which once was a real thing. We may declare with ample smugness that documentaries are documents of real things; & so we honor the dead Nanook by watching the living version in perpetuity, as if in prayer at an altar containing the ashes of a man and his time, now extinct.
But the facts of the matter are now known: that Flaherty, who after having lost his footage of his 1st voyage to the arctic (the filming of which was quite sincerely for - in this case the word holds forth its principal meaning - documentary reasons) became self-conscious of his role as artist while filming Nanook the 2nd time around, this time with intentions to make a product of some kind, staged a great deal of the film he called "Nanook of the North" with evident satisfaction at the document's preciosity: principally that Nanook, meaning 'bear', was not Nanook's real name, but Allakariallak; that his two wives were not his wives but Itivimuit women who Flaherty deemed attractive enough to cast in their roles playing 'themselves'; that in certain scenes where Nanook seems to be struggling at hunting for food, Flaherty enlisted an offscreen cadre to help; that Flaherty insisted that his characters wear their traditional clothing, though their use had already passed into tribal desuetude; etc. In short, Flaherty to a large degree staged sequences for the purpose of enlivening his document with elements of suspense and action, at that time a fitting concept quite nascent to the undisclosed purpose of film itself. As such it could be advanced that although Nanook, his family, & their way of life are to be respected as existent entities in the world - or more specifically that they have a historical footprint which can be traced back to an authentic tradition -, the actual material of the film is derived from, & would in turn propel, what would later mature into established practice in the largescale production of the broadly fictional works we call the 'movies'.
When we delight in watching Nanook spend quality time & warmth with his 'family' or when he listens with tremendous glee to the musical sounds emitting from a gramophone; or when we shake with suspense to see the largeness of the unseen seal he plays tug-of-war with as the harpoon line slips into a small aperture that leads to icy water: when we become infected with these emotions at the expense of a film documenting a real man's historical path through a dangerous world, we are not just seeing the living, breathing, acting life of an actual man whose culture we glimpse in silent frames, we are also creating the image of an idealized man who comes to stand for the whole of the fading Itivimuit tribe, and yet who remains in himself the unique and individual persona of Nanook. We glimpse Achilles & Don Quijote in him & all the rest of the mythic heroes. We sense that while watching a documentary about the Itivimuit tribe, we are also watching a film - a work of craftsmanship, of gadgets & effects - whose rudiments are no different from those that construct the fictions we know well, the fictions which so scrupulously epitomize the struggle that we quite proudly conclude to take place in life in a distinctly nonfiction way. We come to sculpt Nanook in time along with Flaherty. It is to Flaherty's credit that the dramatic scaffolding in "Nanook of the North" allows us the liberty to do so, to join him in the creation of a small yet necessary monument to a way of life that may pass away in time.
Watch the scenes in which Nanook survives & fights with the elements; watch the scene in which he and fellow tribal members attack the walrus, or when he battles with the hidden seal under the ice cap; see yourself stirred by these sequences and know that you are not watching a documentary but an action film...
It results that "Nanook of the North" is among the 1st action suspense thrillers in our film history.
...
Cf. http://criterioncollection.blogspot.com/2005/07/33-nanook-of-north.html
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