Happy People: A Year in the Taiga: Documentary or Poetry?

http://postdefiance.com/happy-people-a-year-in-the-taiga-documentary-or-poetry/

Nobody tells me what to do…I am my own man.

Such is the claim of one of the virile characters in Happy People: A Year in the Taiga, a documentary co-directed by Dmitry Vasyukov and the prolific German filmmaker Werner Herzog.

These words seem familiar to an American audience, almost stereotypical of the mentality by which we are regularly defined. But the words are spoken by a Russian sable trapper living in the middle of Siberia with nary an outlet to civilization as we know it. “Amurrican?” Far from it.

The film follows a year in the lives of sable trappers in a remote Bakhtian village: a year that, like every other, is a quest to survive the harsh conditions. Herzog and Vasyukov present the narrative as a slice-of-life drama, an everyday epic for which the camera crew is merely along for the ride.

Herzog and company are enthralled with the lives of the men they’re following. In fact, the directorial duo seems more than glad to cooperate with the decidedly masculine culture they document. Women make brief and obligatory appearances; the rest of the time, we spectators follow the Russian men through the wilderness and let Herzog’s narration wash over us.

When that smooth German accent does its best, it easily persuades us of the extraordinary nature of the men we’re watching. Yet Herzog’s narration can be just a little problematic. At one point he rises to sublime heights of description/sinks into the worst kind of glorified othering:

“Now, out on their own, the trappers become what they essentially are: happy people. Accompanied only by their dogs, they live off the land. They are completely self-reliant. They are truly free. No rules, no taxes, no government, no laws, no bureaucracy, no phones, no radio, equipped only with their individual values and standard of conduct.”

As this voiceover overlaps with symphonic music, we see footage of a man steering a canoe upriver by means of an outboard motor. Herzog goes on to tell us that this man’s name is Mikhail Tarkovsky, relation of the acclaimed Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky. In a truly odd juxtaposition, the film insists on the technological self-sufficiency of the Taiga people, while aligning them with modern advancements like the internal combustion engine and one of the most technologically advanced forms of art: cinema.

And Herzog’s narration isn’t the only aspect that rings less as documentary and more as poetry. The invisibility of the camera’s presence that makes this otherwise lovely journey is also problematic. A documentary common practice, to be sure, but Herzog is among the most adept and savvy of documentarians; he knows what he’s doing when he makes the choice to keep the presence of a non-native film crew completely out of the camera’s field of vision. The technique potentially ignores the camera’s very real and very foreign presence on that home turf, keeping at arm’s length a world that it conflictingly wants to bring within our reach.

By distancing the audience from the Siberian snow and its inhabitants, Herzog is free to perform a documentary of poetry, a free-form ode to an idealized people that he profoundly admires and wants us to admire, too. And what’s wrong with poetry? Nothing, of course…but beware of poetry masquerading as simple history.

To be fair, Herzog acknowledges the presence of chainsaws and snowmobiles in this land of self-reliance. And the camera records myriad other technologies that have somehow made their way into this inaccessible wilderness. And herein lies the real hazard of Herzog’s hidden camera: there is no such thing as a “pure” culture since every culture is the progeny and interpretation of others. By holding aloft the Taiga people as “other,” therefore perhaps better, idealization becomes falsification.

Herzog wants us to see this world as unblemished by all that is modern, a time warp into an edenic realm. In so doing, he makes choices about what we see and what we don’t. But enough contradictions slip through the cracks to reveal his construal of this society.

Even a glorified interpretation is an interpretation, not equal to the original.

But to be even more fair, the subjects that Happy People documents deserve our attention. As we complain about spotty 4G service and navel-gaze about “the nature of art” and other such privileged questions, there remain folks in this world whose isolation brings out something we are unlikely to see in ourselves.

When the Siberian trapper says he is his own man, he says it without the pretense that we almost reflexively hear in such a statement. He knows his dependence on the land, the ecosystem of which he is a part. When he recounts his dog’s death at the hands of a bear, we are not likely to roll our eyes at his tears, perceiving his reliance on and love for an animal whose loyalty allowed him to keep on living.

The moral of this story is not: “Eat your dinner; there are starving children in Africa.” On the other hand, it’s not far from it.

第二篇： by | Steven Boone

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/happy-people-a-year-in-the-taiga-2013

Film director Werner Herzog's voice is so distinct and soothing that those of us who swear by it as a tonic for the soul sometimes assume the man is a household name. I made that mistake recently while chatting with a friend who praised Christoph Waltz's performance in "Django Unchained." "Yeah," I said, "The only person who could play a multilingual, multi-genius German impresario better than Waltz would have been Herzog."

"Wha? What's a hearse hog?"

I played her Herzog's reading of the children's book Go the Fuck to Sleep and his narration for Ramin Bahrani's short film "Plastic Bag." She was hooked. The mellifluous German accent, that rising-falling modulation, worked its magic.

And that was just Werner lending his singular sound to other people's projects.

Herzog's voiceover narration has been as powerful a utility for his own potentially ponderous documentaries as Clint Eastwood's profile has been for the latter's tough-guy dramas. The films could probably stand on their own merits without That Voice, but why should they?

Like "Grizzly Man," Herzog's latest documentary, "Happy People: A Year in the Taiga" is mostly built around another filmmaker's priceless footage. Russian videographer Dmitry Yasyukov shot four documentaries about Russian fur trappers in the Siberian Taiga, a remote wilderness larger than the whole of the United States. Herzog happened upon the films at an L.A. friend's house and became as obsessed with their beauty as he once was with Timothy Treadwell's footage of grizzly bears.

His authorial signature comes through in the way he edits the material and gives it meaningful context through narration. It's a touching gesture, one filmmaker finding the glory in another's images and amplifying it through his own generous and idiosyncratic vision. What Herzog gleans from Yaskyuov's exhaustive material is a simple observation: The men of the Taiga are heroes of rugged individualism.

“They live off the land and are self reliant, truly free,” Herzog intones, as a Klaus Badelt score works to send a chill of admiration up our spines. “No rules, no taxes, no government, no laws, no bureaucracy, no phones, no radio, equipped only with their individual values and standard of conduct.”

In nearly every Herzog documentary there is a speech like this one, wherein the director reveals in plain language his passion for his subject. This particular song of praise says that people who live simply, honestly and responsibly are generally happy people. It also sings of tradition more eloquently than Teyve in "Fiddler on the Roof." Work and tradition abide. One hunter boasts that his skill is an inheritance of a thousand years of practice and refinement.

There is another way to interpret Yasyukov's material, as a bleak, miserablist view of the hunters' circumstances that emphasizes the fact that they hardly ever have a moment's rest. Work is a constant, and nature always threatens to freeze, drown, starve or (in the form of aggressive bears) eat them. This is the perspective a young Herzog might have chosen. “Overwhelming and collective murder” is how he described nature during the making of his bleakest, angriest epic, "Fitzcarraldo." (His grandiose rants were just as fun to listen to when they were depressing.)

Instead, this time we get celebratory scenes of a hunter and his son serenely enduring mosquitoes that swarm over every centimeter of exposed flesh during a dank Taiga summer. Yasyukov's footage exhaustively documents the hunters' work processes, so Herzog uses it to take us through each step of making mosquito repellent from scratch. (To my surprise, it's similar to preparing old-fashioned blackface.)

Though they use manufactured equipment like snowmobiles and wear some presumably factory-made clothing, much of the technology these trappers and their families employ is built from scratch. In a fascinating segment that suggests Herzog and Yasyukov would produce great instructional DVDs ("How to Survive the Apocalypse"), a hunter shows us how to make wooden skis that will outlast the most expensive synthetic designer ones.

Fascination with processes and with the men who master them to become expert woodsmen leaves Herzog no time to address their wives and children, whom we glimpse only at hunting sendoffs and when the men return to their homes loaded down with quarry. Whatever routines occupy the wives is of little interest to either Yasyukov or Herzog. What we do catch of them says that they, too, are very happy people. “I'm alone again,” one wife says, as her man heads out on another long expedition. In a typical arthouse fiction film, she would be the face of uncertainty and despair in that moment. In "Happy People," she just states the fact with a bittersweet smile. Herzog cuts away (or Yasyukov's cameraman stops recording) quickly.

The dogs, on the other hand, receive rapturous attention. One thing I learned from "Happy People" is that a dog in the Taiga is like a horse in the American Frontier: not merely a “best friend” but a lifeline. A brooding hunter becomes emotional when recalling a dog who gave up her life defending him from a bear attack. We see the dogs set to work with military discipline. Herzog adds some stirring, heartening Badelt music to a scene of a dog keeping pace with his master's snowmobile for nearly a hundred miles.

So the focus is tight, but the love comes through in many ways. Herzog mentions that one of the fishermen who shot some of the footage is a relative of the great Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. The instant that name came up, I was struck with memories of all the odes to Russia's natural beauty in Tarkovsky's nostalgic films. It made me consider that Herzog might have taken on this project as a gesture of German-Russian relations—an interdependent association now, but historically one of horrific wars. Imagine a Japanese filmmaker celebrating Chinese traditions. (Actually, there are films like Kenji Mizoguchi's Japanese take on Chinese history, "Princess Yang Kwei-fei," and they tend to be weirdly interesting.)

The fact that Herzog shot none of the footage comes across most strongly when we briefly visit a couple of indigenous Taiga people. They build a boat with staggering precision, row it out onto the icy waters, and then they are gone from the film. I can't imagine Herzog having access to folks whose traditions go even further back than the Russians leaving it at that.

All of this apparent Walden-like freedom struck close to home for me—or would, if I had a home. I stepped off the grid in New York City four years ago, trying to find a simpler way to live that would free me of corporate wage-slavery. Four years later, I've found that such freedom is virtually impossible in American cities. To live as free and clear as the men of the Taiga do, I would have to go to a farm, a commune—or the Taiga. On a landscape of concrete, there is no hunting or homesteading, just purchasing and renting. Parks and community gardens preserve some testy relationship with the natural world, but, let's face it, the world I and most folks reading this essay occupy keeps us dependent upon corporate delivery systems for our survival essentials. Are we happy this way?

Herzog, whose films have captured ecstatic faces in prisons, asylums, rainforests and arctic base camps, would probably answer, “That is up to you, my friend. You must work with whatever you have been given,” in a voice that could make a man caught in a bear trap smile.

我真的太喜歡這部片子了，不是告訴自己這部片子很棒我要喜歡它的那種喜歡，是可以看哭，是看得心里酸酸澀澀，思緒涌動的那種喜歡!這里是西伯利亞，巴赫塔，位于俄羅斯北部葉尼塞河畔的一個村莊，鏡頭對準了這里的一部分人——獵人!哦我的天，一個人擁有1500km2的廣大土地，在這里過著自由自在令很多人羨慕的生活，卻也是在很多人眼里根本承受不了的生活! 短短的90分鐘的片子，經歷了從一年冬天到下一年冬天。冬天，零下五十度的氣溫，遠離村莊遠離家人在狗狗的陪伴下在針葉林里度過幾個月!白天帶著狗狗打獵，檢查陷阱的收貨，鑿冰捕魚，晚上回到夏天搭建的屋子里;夏天忍受巨多的蚊子，開始為冬天做準備! 我覺得他們的生活在現(xiàn)代化充斥的今天是難得的，是令我感覺到震撼和敬佩的，但捫心自問，我羨慕嗎？我不知道……我向往嗎？我不敢向往，我在這里根本活不下去…… 他們，延續(xù)祖輩的生活方式 按照祖輩傳承下來的經驗和技能在這里生活，每天忙碌而辛勞，冬天酷寒，夏日難耐，他們會享受自己自由的生活還是偶爾也會感慨生活的艱辛?我只能說子非魚…… 他們與狗狗的情誼太令我動容了!那只勇敢地撲向熊的狗狗，讓我面部肌肉抽動，眼淚撲簌簌地掉下來……他們凍得通紅的雙手和面頰，令我心中酸酸澀澀，日復一日、年復一年這樣的生活??！ 影片最后遠去的背影……這就是生活吧！

以前納悶俄羅斯人為何嗜伏特加如命，那句諺語說，冬天的夜里，俄羅斯的光棍更愿意摟著一瓶伏特加，而不是一個老婆，有老婆之人第二天成了光棍。

現(xiàn)在才真正體會到，伏特加儼然是他們的暖腸之酒。俄羅斯人強烈的生存欲望與西伯利亞極寒的冷酷相互磨礪，那樣極烈的酒，大概只有它才能夠抵御這嚴酷的自然環(huán)境，幫助他們熬過這漫漫寒冬吧…

巴哈提雅村，這個位于西伯利亞中心地帶的村莊，只有幾百人的村莊，卻擁有一個國家般大小的廣袤土地，而四周的無盡原野將這里緊緊包圍。生活回饋給他們的是望不到盡頭的針葉林，以及除他們以外，誰也無緣欣賞到的寒地絕美風景，這大概是上帝最無價的待遇。

冰原環(huán)境與家庭生活冷暖交割，冬去春來，你會發(fā)現(xiàn)，時間在這里流逝的無足輕重。春季來臨，冰層解凍，整個冰川在西伯利亞最大的葉尼塞河里流淌時，你也會動容于人們究竟憑了什么才在自然美麗又殘酷的造物下活得如此生機勃勃…

所有的人在苦寒之地收藏了一整個房間的蓄勢待發(fā)，等極夜結束的時候，折斷根莖，插上一朵鐵質的花。于是心臟重新活蹦亂跳，而不會餓死，凍死在這“豐饒”的被諸神遺忘了的地方…

—《快樂的人們》.有感

他們自由自在，沒有規(guī)則，沒有稅收，沒有政府，沒有法律，沒有官僚組織，沒有電話，沒有收音機，只帶著他們自己的價值觀和行為準則， 天空的微曦和薄霜是雨后的慰藉，給自己取取暖，喝杯茶，這比什么都讓人開心，個中滋味無與倫比。 當我來這兒的時候，我有一種實現(xiàn)夢想的感覺。你欣賞自然美景的同時，還能一邊工作著，這就是為什么最后大家都當了獵人。因為捕獵比任何事物都拉近你與針葉林的距離。見證這空曠，寒冷與沉寂之美。 農戶養(yǎng)豬，為的是吃豬肉和賣給屠宰場。獵人只是比農戶更誠實。家禽希望從農戶那得到點零食或者愛撫，沒想到卻是一顆子彈。而獵物知道自己從獵戶那得不到任何好處，所以盡全力逃跑，這是一場斗智斗勇的游戲。 獵狗可能會偷吃誘餌，但假如你只是一再呵斥和責罰，它可能會怕你但會在晚上或者你不注意的時候繼續(xù)偷吃誘餌，那是一種生存本能，它不知道這會弄壞陷阱，讓獵人的辛苦白費。但你可以專門制造一個陷阱給獵狗，讓它在里面呆上難受，它就會主動遠離陷阱，這種駕馭的技巧對于獵人也是必備的。 其他影評： 是生存，也是生活。是常理，也是哲學。未必是快樂，自由帶來的是另一種形式的奔波和孤獨。（或許一年都未必有幾天與家人團聚的日子，但或許他們就是生性如此，有對生活的期盼，有能力賺點錢，有條忠心卻早逝的獵犬，有獨處一片的自由與領主意識，還有與獵物的周旋以及自身經驗的常用常新）

平靜，自然，客觀的記錄世外桃源的獵人生活，雖然是老片子了，沒啥牛逼的拍攝工具和手法，頂多就點水下拍攝和直升機航拍了，但至少不矯情，不擺大道理（這里是對比舌尖三，好好說個吃的唄，動不動就升華干嘛）。就是認認真真的說了獵人的一年四季的生活和村莊的一點群像，都是日常小事，在獵人的實際言行中不著痕跡的描繪了自己獨特的人生觀與價值觀。孤獨的人生與靜謐的的大自然深深擁抱，關照自我。想想現(xiàn)在充滿欲望的社會與浮躁的我，就需要一個孤獨靜謐的自然環(huán)境來做做禪啊

《快樂的人們》是德國導演沃納·赫爾佐格拍攝的一部記錄西伯利亞中心地區(qū)一群特殊人們的紀錄片。西伯利亞對我而言，就是嚴寒和寂寥的代名詞，甚至它更是一片流放之地。幾年的旅行中也認識過幾個來在西伯利亞的朋友，但他們似乎已經深受現(xiàn)代文明的影響，走出了那片常年冰冷之土，融入了都市的生活。

西伯利亞的中心有一座只有300人的村莊，要到達這只有兩種途徑，一是乘坐直升機，一是乘船，在冰雪融化之際他們乘船穿越俄羅斯最大的河流，葉尼塞河，來到這個被針葉樹包圍的地方。它遠離一切喧囂，就如陶淵明筆下的桃花源一樣，被人遺忘，像一座”冰雪天堂“一樣，導演記錄了這座村莊中最小眾的獵人們的一年四季，春夏秋冬。

西伯利亞氣候常年寒冷無比，即使是春季，到處也藏留著冬的氣息。直到葉尼塞河開始融化，我第一次看到了河中冰水溶解的生命力，巨大的冰塊發(fā)出了春的吶喊，低沉地咆哮著流向遠方。導演采訪的其中一名獵人，1970年和朋友從莫斯科來到這里，他們一無所有，就連冬衣都沒有，所有的生活所需全部依靠雙手來創(chuàng)造。獵人說：”我們雖然為獵人，但我們卻鄙視貪婪，做獵人不可以貪婪，不能無限制地索取自然?！?/p>

夏季從5月開始，但是初夏的他們依然得穿冬衣。夏季最令人苦惱的就是蚊子，黑壓壓地上百只蚊子圍繞著村子里的每一個人，村里沒有藥店，他們就地取材把樺樹皮取下熬制成焦油涂在臉上。夏季白晝變長，甚至可以長達20個小時，這是一個令人歡愉的季節(jié)，但獵人們也要不斷地為秋冬即將到來的捕獵季節(jié)做準備。采訪了村里的一家本地人，他們的樣子完全是黑發(fā)黑眼，這些原住民還保留了他們原始的木偶崇拜，家中的老奶奶把木偶珍藏著，卻在一場意外的大火中把這古老的記憶燃燒殆盡。夏末松鼠開始收集松仁之際，也就意味著夏季的告別，他們完全遵循著自然的規(guī)律，也和松鼠一樣開始儲存秋冬的果仁。夏季末，從都市里終于來了一個豪華郵輪，原來是政客為了選票到這里拉票，這是四年里他們第一次來到這里。

秋季是收獲的季節(jié)，種植在樹上的果子，蔬菜都是采摘的時候，秋季也是捕魚的好節(jié)氣，獵人們自己砍樹制作獨木舟，似乎還用著史前的方法拿著三叉戟去湖水中捕魚，秋季是獵頭最開心的時節(jié)，“獵人們，只身闖蕩，只有幾只狗的陪伴，遠離故土，完全靠自己，他們真正地自由，沒有規(guī)則，沒有稅收，沒有政府，沒有法律，沒有官僚組織，沒有電話，沒有收音機，只帶著他們自己的價值和行為準則。“其中一名獵人說：”很多人都是一邊工作，一邊欣賞美景，獵人的工作讓你和針葉樹之間的距離拉近了。“

冬季的西伯利亞氣溫降到負50度，似乎一切都在這冬季冬眠了，而獵人卻要在這時開始捕獵紫貂，他們在針葉樹林里建造了自己的獵房，全手工木質的小屋成為了他們在這極度冰冷之地的避難所。在這樣極端的氣候下，每一個獵人都需要他們最忠實的獵狗，獵人會通過各種方法找到最合適的獵狗，并同他們并肩戰(zhàn)斗，獵狗不僅是捕獵的伙伴，更是他們孤身在這森林中的朋友。

《快樂的人們》就是這樣一群“掙扎”在生存和生活邊緣的獵人們，看著他們的生活，好像還活在人類發(fā)展進程中的早期階段，但他們自足的心，卻似乎沒有被這嚴寒所封閉，自在地生活在廣袤的針葉樹林里。

這群生活在西伯利亞的獵人們離群索居，讓我想到百年前，美國作家梭羅獨自來到瓦爾登湖畔寫下的文字，把它分享給尋覓快樂的你?！安还苣愕纳疃嗝吹谋拔ⅲ急仨氂掠趫詮姷孛鎸ι?；不要逃避，不要謾罵，因為它快的成都，還比不上你，你最富有的時候，往往就是你最貧窮的時候。挑三揀四的人，即便在天堂也照樣挑剔。愛你的生活吧，盡管貧窮。即便在貧民窟，你也可以擁有快樂，激動，榮耀的生活。灑在夫人宅邸的陽光，于灑在窮人窗欞上的一樣明亮。所有人門前的積雪在春天一樣融化?！?/p>

文章系慢游憶原創(chuàng)發(fā)布，未經授權，謝絕引用和轉載，違者將被依法追究法律責任。

如果你對我的旅居故事感興趣，請?zhí)砑游⑿殴娞枺郝螒?。三?lián)中讀簽約作者，全球旅行30個國家，熱愛寫作和瑜伽，癡迷小眾國家藝術。