Review of Happy People: A Year in the Taiga (2010) by Dario R — 08 Aug 2013

Happy People is one of the most recent of Werner Herzog's long string of documentaries, though it's worth noting he did not actually shoot any of this one himself. All of the footage from this movie came from a longer documentary by the Russian director Dmitry Vasyukov, which Herzog later saw and then edited down into this version, adding his own inimitable narration. As a result, this is a bit more matter-of-fact than most of Herzog's other recent documentaries, but it's still pretty fascinating. There's less weirdness and grand metaphysical speculation, but it's still a detailed look at lives very different from our own.

The movie was shot over the course of a year in the Siberian Taiga, a huge wilderness where a very small group of people make their livings as fur trappers. The movie follows a couple of trappers in particular, and takes us on a tour of how they live their lives - building traps, travelling through snowy forests, building numerous huts, building skis and canoes, raising hunting dogs, and so on. These men spend most of their year with only their dogs for company out in the wilderness. Pretty much the only twentieth-century tools they use often are snowmobiles and chainsaws; for nearly everything else, they use tools and techniques that are hundreds of years old. Herzog narrates all this, and argues that these people are happy because they lead truly free and independent lives. Perhaps they are, but the movie really does get you to compare your own life with theirs and imagine what it would be like to be them (and I suspect I'd be happier as me). There's no mentions of abysses or madness or God in this one, just a straightforward examination of the trappers' way of life. So while Herzog fans should be aware of that going into the movie, it still works quite well as what it is.