Man of Aran
by Robert J. Flaherty
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Actor: Colman 'Tiger' King, Maggie Dirrane, Michael Dirrane, Pat Mullin, Patch 'Red Beard' RuadhDirector: Robert J. Flaherty
Brand: Image Entertainment
Cinematographer: Robert J. Flaherty
Writer: Robert J. Flaherty
Editor: John Goldman
Producer: Michael Balcon
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Black & White, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 76 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-05-20
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Homevision
DVD Reviews of Man of Aran
DVD Review: An Artistic Masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
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.DVD Review: INCREDIBLE
Summary: 5 Stars
Simply incredible! Stunning documentary me and my wife..loved the way this was filmed and truly brought you back in time to the "way of the Irish"... the accompanying follow up on the docu some 40 yrs latr was also fantastic. Such lovely warm people.
Buy it you'll love it!!
DVD Review: What Man of Aran is really about
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
DVD Review: Irish Movie
Summary: 4 Stars
Had to buy this movie as I was going to this island of Aran. Stayed in the B&B that was built for the director.DVD Review: And I thought we were poor when I was a kid...
Summary: 4 Stars
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.
Description of Man of Aran
Robert J. Flaherty's award-winning Man of Aran uses stunning location photography and brilliant montage editing to build a forceful drama of life on the Aran Islands. Situated among the frequent and violent storms that slam into its barren landscape, the islands are "three wastes of rock" off the western coast of Ireland. With a small crew, Flaherty spent nearly two years shooting, developing, and assembling footage of the islanders' Herculean efforts to survive in unbearably harsh conditions. Home Vision Entertainment is proud to present this historic masterpiece in a new digital transfer.While it stretches the definition of documentary, Robert Flaherty's Man of Aran remains a triumph of poetic imagery, and one of the greatest nonfiction films ever made. Critic Pauline Kael hailed it as "the greatest film tribute to man's struggle against hostile nature," referring to conditions faced by bold residents of the Aran Islands, 30 miles offshore from Galway, Ireland, amidst the harshest seas of the Atlantic. Flaherty and his tiny crew spent over two years on the islands, chronicling the rugged lives of the Araners on a landscape so rocky that seaweed is used as improvised soil. Flaherty cast the film with assorted locals and recreated anachronistic events (such as the harpooning of a basking shark) from Aran's past, inviting controversy over the film's authenticity. That debate continues on this DVD's exceptional bonus features (for retrospective insight, "How the Myth Was Made" is every bit as good as Flaherty's film), but Man of Aran is, and always will be, a timeless record of extraordinary people, miraculously surviving in a most extraordinary place. --Jeff Shannon
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