An excellent film. After having caught on - it took me a while, up to the middle of it - I leaned back and let the sumptuous landscapes overwhelm me. In the rapidly evolving 'documentary' genre, director and explorer Nicolas Vanier's film inaugurates a new variant which we could tentatively call "self-fiction".
As one would expect from an authentic trapper and his wife, dialogue is sparse. At times, the protagonists' embarrassment before the camera is palpable. Many scenes involving the couple seem posed, and the main incident involving Norman's sled breaking through the ice, (the re-enactment of what may or may not be a true episode) is not convincing. Voice-over representing the inner voice is omnipresent. One is left to wonder whether excellent actors would not have played Norman and May Loo more convincingly than they themselves. The documentary character of the movie might have remained partly intact, the director having resorted to constructs several times. Even so, the narrative arc remains fairly shallow.
This is a movie without apparent violence. Yet violence is subliminally present: it is, after all, the violence of the logging companies against nature's treasures which trigger the film's central action, Norman's move to less dis-equilibrated territory. One strongly senses the violence of advancing, all-devouring modern society. This film could not be more different from the 'classic' trapper movies like Jeremiah Johnson' .
For having succeeded with this nonviolent portrait of violence, and for having dared the climate and returned with such magnificent photography, Le Dernier Trappeur deserves 8/10.
As one would expect from an authentic trapper and his wife, dialogue is sparse. At times, the protagonists' embarrassment before the camera is palpable. Many scenes involving the couple seem posed, and the main incident involving Norman's sled breaking through the ice, (the re-enactment of what may or may not be a true episode) is not convincing. Voice-over representing the inner voice is omnipresent. One is left to wonder whether excellent actors would not have played Norman and May Loo more convincingly than they themselves. The documentary character of the movie might have remained partly intact, the director having resorted to constructs several times. Even so, the narrative arc remains fairly shallow.
This is a movie without apparent violence. Yet violence is subliminally present: it is, after all, the violence of the logging companies against nature's treasures which trigger the film's central action, Norman's move to less dis-equilibrated territory. One strongly senses the violence of advancing, all-devouring modern society. This film could not be more different from the 'classic' trapper movies like Jeremiah Johnson' .
For having succeeded with this nonviolent portrait of violence, and for having dared the climate and returned with such magnificent photography, Le Dernier Trappeur deserves 8/10.