Wow! The coolest things about this is that there was a real guy, Nanuk/Nanook of the North, the "Great White Bear," and he has a grown son who knows all the ancient stuff!
This is almost all about caribou and reindeer, not about the Great North in general. Interesting for anybody who lives South of the Arctic, but it would have been even more engaging if there had been less footage of terrified running herds, and more about the close relationships between the Inuit and other Eskimos and the various animals of North America, and the Sami and their total dependence on the reindeer for draft animals, meat, milk, leather, horn, and bone, and the anthropological and sociological importance of their very early domestication of livestock.
I wish there had been more about the Eskimo and Sami cultures that are in danger of being lost, and more about the interaction between these traditional peoples and the animals and land around them that were a large part of their lives. Two good Sami stories.
The first/last Inuit narrator was very interesting, and I wish that a Sami narrator could have also been found, even with subtitles, for the the other half of the film. Very disturbing, watching hundreds or thousands of exhausted reindeer repeatedly fleeing from Sami helicopters throughout the film, but at least part of that was for the purpose of radio collaring one for tracking and animal preservation.
The vignettes of a specific Inuit family's life, and the archived film clips of Nanook toward the end were entrancing, and I wish there had been much more of that stuff. It fascinates me.
Very fitting and different soundtrack, mostly.
The aerial herding was unnerving, but I think everybody should see the rest of it, so I'm giving it a high rating.
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