快乐的人们

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.

我真的太喜欢这部片子了，不是告诉自己这部片子很棒我要喜欢它的那种喜欢，是可以看哭，是看得心里酸酸涩涩，思绪涌动的那种喜欢!这里是西伯利亚，巴赫塔，位于俄罗斯北部叶尼塞河畔的一个村庄，镜头对准了这里的一部分人——猎人!哦我的天，一个人拥有1500km²的广大土地，在这里过着自由自在令很多人羡慕的生活，却也是在很多人眼里根本承受不了的生活! 短短的90分钟的片子，经历了从一年冬天到下一年冬天。冬天，零下五十度的气温，远离村庄远离家人在狗狗的陪伴下在针叶林里度过几个月!白天带着狗狗打猎，检查陷阱的收货，凿冰捕鱼，晚上回到夏天搭建的屋子里;夏天忍受巨多的蚊子，开始为冬天做准备! 我觉得他们的生活在现代化充斥的今天是难得的，是令我感觉到震撼和敬佩的，但扪心自问，我羡慕吗？我不知道……我向往吗？我不敢向往，我在这里根本活不下去…… 他们，延续祖辈的生活方式 按照祖辈传承下来的经验和技能在这里生活，每天忙碌而辛劳，冬天酷寒，夏日难耐，他们会享受自己自由的生活还是偶尔也会感慨生活的艰辛?我只能说子非鱼…… 他们与狗狗的情谊太令我动容了!那只勇敢地扑向熊的狗狗，让我面部肌肉抽动，眼泪扑簌簌地掉下来……他们冻得通红的双手和面颊，令我心中酸酸涩涩，日复一日、年复一年这样的生活啊！ 影片最后远去的背影……这就是生活吧！

以前纳闷俄罗斯人为何嗜伏特加如命，那句谚语说，冬天的夜里，俄罗斯的光棍更愿意搂着一瓶伏特加，而不是一个老婆，有老婆之人第二天成了光棍。

现在才真正体会到，伏特加俨然是他们的暖肠之酒。俄罗斯人强烈的生存欲望与西伯利亚极寒的冷酷相互磨砺，那样极烈的酒，大概只有它才能够抵御这严酷的自然环境，帮助他们熬过这漫漫寒冬吧…

巴哈提雅村，这个位于西伯利亚中心地带的村庄，只有几百人的村庄，却拥有一个国家般大小的广袤土地，而四周的无尽原野将这里紧紧包围。生活回馈给他们的是望不到尽头的针叶林，以及除他们以外，谁也无缘欣赏到的寒地绝美风景，这大概是上帝最无价的待遇。

冰原环境与家庭生活冷暖交割，冬去春来，你会发现，时间在这里流逝的无足轻重。春季来临，冰层解冻，整个冰川在西伯利亚最大的叶尼塞河里流淌时，你也会动容于人们究竟凭了什么才在自然美丽又残酷的造物下活得如此生机勃勃…

所有的人在苦寒之地收藏了一整个房间的蓄势待发，等极夜结束的时候，折断根茎，插上一朵铁质的花。于是心脏重新活蹦乱跳，而不会饿死，冻死在这“丰饶”的被诸神遗忘了的地方…

—《快乐的人们》.有感

他们自由自在，没有规则，没有税收，没有政府，没有法律，没有官僚组织，没有电话，没有收音机，只带着他们自己的价值观和行为准则， 天空的微曦和薄霜是雨后的慰藉，给自己取取暖，喝杯茶，这比什么都让人开心，个中滋味无与伦比。 当我来这儿的时候，我有一种实现梦想的感觉。你欣赏自然美景的同时，还能一边工作着，这就是为什么最后大家都当了猎人。因为捕猎比任何事物都拉近你与针叶林的距离。见证这空旷，寒冷与沉寂之美。 农户养猪，为的是吃猪肉和卖给屠宰场。猎人只是比农户更诚实。家禽希望从农户那得到点零食或者爱抚，没想到却是一颗子弹。而猎物知道自己从猎户那得不到任何好处，所以尽全力逃跑，这是一场斗智斗勇的游戏。 猎狗可能会偷吃诱饵，但假如你只是一再呵斥和责罚，它可能会怕你但会在晚上或者你不注意的时候继续偷吃诱饵，那是一种生存本能，它不知道这会弄坏陷阱，让猎人的辛苦白费。但你可以专门制造一个陷阱给猎狗，让它在里面呆上难受，它就会主动远离陷阱，这种驾驭的技巧对于猎人也是必备的。 其他影评： 是生存，也是生活。是常理，也是哲学。未必是快乐，自由带来的是另一种形式的奔波和孤独。（或许一年都未必有几天与家人团聚的日子，但或许他们就是生性如此，有对生活的期盼，有能力赚点钱，有条忠心却早逝的猎犬，有独处一片的自由与领主意识，还有与猎物的周旋以及自身经验的常用常新）

平静，自然，客观的记录世外桃源的猎人生活，虽然是老片子了，没啥牛逼的拍摄工具和手法，顶多就点水下拍摄和直升机航拍了，但至少不矫情，不摆大道理（这里是对比舌尖三，好好说个吃的呗，动不动就升华干嘛）。就是认认真真的说了猎人的一年四季的生活和村庄的一点群像，都是日常小事，在猎人的实际言行中不着痕迹的描绘了自己独特的人生观与价值观。孤独的人生与静谧的的大自然深深拥抱，关照自我。想想现在充满欲望的社会与浮躁的我，就需要一个孤独静谧的自然环境来做做禅啊

《快乐的人们》是德国导演沃纳·赫尔佐格拍摄的一部记录西伯利亚中心地区一群特殊人们的纪录片。西伯利亚对我而言，就是严寒和寂寥的代名词，甚至它更是一片流放之地。几年的旅行中也认识过几个来在西伯利亚的朋友，但他们似乎已经深受现代文明的影响，走出了那片常年冰冷之土，融入了都市的生活。

西伯利亚的中心有一座只有300人的村庄，要到达这只有两种途径，一是乘坐直升机，一是乘船，在冰雪融化之际他们乘船穿越俄罗斯最大的河流，叶尼塞河，来到这个被针叶树包围的地方。它远离一切喧嚣，就如陶渊明笔下的桃花源一样，被人遗忘，像一座”冰雪天堂“一样，导演记录了这座村庄中最小众的猎人们的一年四季，春夏秋冬。

西伯利亚气候常年寒冷无比，即使是春季，到处也藏留着冬的气息。直到叶尼塞河开始融化，我第一次看到了河中冰水溶解的生命力，巨大的冰块发出了春的呐喊，低沉地咆哮着流向远方。导演采访的其中一名猎人，1970年和朋友从莫斯科来到这里，他们一无所有，就连冬衣都没有，所有的生活所需全部依靠双手来创造。猎人说：”我们虽然为猎人，但我们却鄙视贪婪，做猎人不可以贪婪，不能无限制地索取自然。“

夏季从5月开始，但是初夏的他们依然得穿冬衣。夏季最令人苦恼的就是蚊子，黑压压地上百只蚊子围绕着村子里的每一个人，村里没有药店，他们就地取材把桦树皮取下熬制成焦油涂在脸上。夏季白昼变长，甚至可以长达20个小时，这是一个令人欢愉的季节，但猎人们也要不断地为秋冬即将到来的捕猎季节做准备。采访了村里的一家本地人，他们的样子完全是黑发黑眼，这些原住民还保留了他们原始的木偶崇拜，家中的老奶奶把木偶珍藏着，却在一场意外的大火中把这古老的记忆燃烧殆尽。夏末松鼠开始收集松仁之际，也就意味着夏季的告别，他们完全遵循着自然的规律，也和松鼠一样开始储存秋冬的果仁。夏季末，从都市里终于来了一个豪华邮轮，原来是政客为了选票到这里拉票，这是四年里他们第一次来到这里。

秋季是收获的季节，种植在树上的果子，蔬菜都是采摘的时候，秋季也是捕鱼的好节气，猎人们自己砍树制作独木舟，似乎还用着史前的方法拿着三叉戟去湖水中捕鱼，秋季是猎头最开心的时节，“猎人们，只身闯荡，只有几只狗的陪伴，远离故土，完全靠自己，他们真正地自由，没有规则，没有税收，没有政府，没有法律，没有官僚组织，没有电话，没有收音机，只带着他们自己的价值和行为准则。“其中一名猎人说：”很多人都是一边工作，一边欣赏美景，猎人的工作让你和针叶树之间的距离拉近了。“

冬季的西伯利亚气温降到负50度，似乎一切都在这冬季冬眠了，而猎人却要在这时开始捕猎紫貂，他们在针叶树林里建造了自己的猎房，全手工木质的小屋成为了他们在这极度冰冷之地的避难所。在这样极端的气候下，每一个猎人都需要他们最忠实的猎狗，猎人会通过各种方法找到最合适的猎狗，并同他们并肩战斗，猎狗不仅是捕猎的伙伴，更是他们孤身在这森林中的朋友。

《快乐的人们》就是这样一群“挣扎”在生存和生活边缘的猎人们，看着他们的生活，好像还活在人类发展进程中的早期阶段，但他们自足的心，却似乎没有被这严寒所封闭，自在地生活在广袤的针叶树林里。

这群生活在西伯利亚的猎人们离群索居，让我想到百年前，美国作家梭罗独自来到瓦尔登湖畔写下的文字，把它分享给寻觅快乐的你。“不管你的生活多么的卑微，都必须勇于坚强地面对生活；不要逃避，不要谩骂，因为它快的成都，还比不上你，你最富有的时候，往往就是你最贫穷的时候。挑三拣四的人，即便在天堂也照样挑剔。爱你的生活吧，尽管贫穷。即便在贫民窟，你也可以拥有快乐，激动，荣耀的生活。洒在夫人宅邸的阳光，于洒在穷人窗棂上的一样明亮。所有人门前的积雪在春天一样融化。”

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如果你对我的旅居故事感兴趣，请添加微信公众号：慢游忆。三联中读签约作者，全球旅行30个国家，热爱写作和瑜伽，痴迷小众国家艺术。