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Happy People (2010)

Posted By: Someonelse
Happy People (2010)

Happy People: A Year in the Taiga (2010)
A Film by Werner Herzog and Dmitry Vasyukov
DVD9 | VIDEO_TS | NTSC 16:9 | 01:34:27 | 6,55 Gb
Audio: Russian, English, German - AC3 5.1 @ 384 Kbps (each) | Subs: English
Genre: Documentary

Director: Werner Herzog, Dmitry Vasyukov

In the center of the story is the life of the indigenous people of the village Bakhtia at the river Yenisei in the Siberian Taiga. The camera follows the protagonists in the village over a period of a year. The natives, whose daily routines have barely changed over the last centuries, keep living their lives according to their own cultural traditions. The expressive pictures are accompanied by original sound bites quoting the villagers.

IMDB - 7.6/10 from 1,552 users

Solid and straightforward illumination of the ways in which a few fur-trappers live and work year-round in the Siberian Taiga.

Happy People (2010)

Starting in Spring, we follow the stoic men on their seasonal routines in the village of Bakhtia on the Yenisei river. The utterly unique sight and sound of that big old river thawing and moving and creaking under the warm sun is totally sublime. With the onset of summer, the villagers participate in a fishing frenzy while fending off massive swarms of mosquitoes by rubbing tar all over themselves, their kids and their dogs. As autumn brings torrential rains, the water level rises and the trappers anxiously begin boating their heavy supplies into the vast forest. They begin repairing their traditional traps scattered throughout the expanse while re-constructing their personal wooden huts, which they will use as shelters along their treks through the deep snow.

Happy People (2010)

Other than one hilarious moment showing an alternatively modern fishing method, most all preparations for the long and lonely winter of work in the wilderness are performed according to very old cultural traditions. The simple and skilled construction of skis, traps, canoes, and huts from natural materials is shown with a patient fascination that draws us into a culture uniquely connected to the earth.

Happy People (2010)

Herzog's narration adds insight and a quirky humor to this otherwise forthright film. His patent deadpan humor – largely deriving in his over-enunciated German accent – and his honest admiration of these self-reliant men living off the land in total freedom from materialism and bureaucracy is refreshing, even if a bit romanticized.
IMDB Reviewer,
32 out of 36 people found this review useful
Happy People (2010)

The latest documentary from Werner Herzog, Happy People: A Year in the Taiga, is not exactly a completely new piece of work from the director, at least in as much as it's not a movie he originally went off and shot himself. Rather, Happy People started life as a four-part, four-hour program from Russian director Dmitry Vasyukov. Each section detailed a different season in the region of the Siberian wilderness called Taiga. Vasyukov followed hunters and trappers who live there, filming how they lived their lives in what most would consider fairly harsh conditions. Each portion of the year is spent preparing for the next. It's an ongoing cycle of survival.

Happy People (2010)

Herzog took the four hours and edited it down to 90 minutes, adding new music and recording his own narration geared toward making life on the frozen plains understandable to non-Russian audiences. In typical Herzog fashion, his focus is on the individual and how he or she interacts with the natural world. He mainly keeps the attention on two seasoned trappers (one of them a descendent of filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky), with a brief excursion to look at how the few remaining indigenous people from the region carry on in modern day. Amidst this, we see the animals that these men hunt and eat and trade, and perhaps most importantly, the relationship a hunter has with his dogs. In both the eyes of the trappers and the outsiders observing their existence, the canines are the true heroes of this story.

Happy People (2010)

Happy People starts in Spring as the early thaw is beginning, and it works its way back around to just before the next year picks up at the spot we originally began. In between, we see the important tasks for life on the Taiga: making skis, securing supplies, building boats, setting traps, etc. We are within spitting distance of the end of Happy People before we see any of the participants do anything remotely resembling fun. All the trappers return to their village and loved ones for Christmas, but otherwise, Herzog shows their lives as solitary endeavors. Over the course of Happy People, you might find yourself asking why these folks carry on as they do. They show no signs of pursuing material possessions, nor do we see even a hint of what we would consider commonplace pop-culture trappings. It's tough not to look at the footage with our own cultural filter and wonder just what the hell these guys are working so hard for. Do they slog through difficult weather merely to scrape together enough sustenance to do it all again the next year?

Happy People (2010)

The answer, of course, is yes, and how we accept and interpret that affirmative response will say a lot about each of us as an audience member. The intent of Happy People is two-fold: first to record a way of life that has not otherwise been preserved on film (and show skills and traditions that are being lost to time), and second to challenge our notion of what it means to be happy. The title Happy People is not ironic. The residents of the Taiga are content with their labor and what its fruits afford them. They don't moan about lacking unnecessary luxury items or worry about celebrity side boob and baby bumps. When a politician comes upriver seeking votes, they pay his campaigning no mind. They have what they need and they lack the outside pressure that tells them it is not enough. It's amazing how little you require when you remove urban anxiety and neuroses and actually go after those requirements with your own two hands.

Happy People (2010)

In his introduction to the film elsewhere on this DVD, Herzog share an anecdote about the main trapper in Happy People. When he heard there was going to be this version of the film and it was going to be shown around the world, he worried that it would inspire pity. The man wanted to be sure the no one felt sorry for the people of the Taiga, and that everyone seeing the documentary knew they liked the way they lived. Having seen Happy People, I think the trapper has it backwards: it's we who should be worried that the hunters of the Taiga pity us.

Happy People (2010)

Highly Recommended. This no-nonsense documentary captures twelve months of life on the Siberian tundra in a manner that is both informative and philosophically illuminating. Werner Herzog has refashioned a four-hour Russian documentary into the 90-minute Happy People: A Year in the Taiga. The film details four seasons in the life of a couple of hunters and trappers, showing how they work their trade and the harsh necessities of the same. It's a rough existence, but a simple one, and slowly Herzog reveals how these dedicated men are perhaps more connected to the world around them than the rest of us simply by being a more active part of it.
Happy People (2010)

Special Features:
Werner Herzog At DOC NYC (06:12)
Excerpt from Dmitry Vasyukov's Happy People (07:13)
Chasing Spring in West Syberia (01:13:23)
Syberia Facts (01:27)
Theatrical trailer (01:56)
3 Audiotracks:
- Original Russian Soundtrack and English Narration by Werner Herzog
- Dubbed English Soundtrack and English Narration by Werner Herzog
- Dubbed German Soundtrack

Many Thanks to Original uploader.


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