What to expect
Murnau and Flaherty combine location photography, non-professional performers, lyrical movement, and fatalistic structure. Its beauty is inseparable from the colonial gaze through which the island world was staged.
How to ease in
The film is divided into Paradise and Paradise Lost. Hold its visual grace alongside the fact that the culture on screen is being arranged by outside filmmakers.
Heads-up
A quick, non-exhaustive note Includes colonial stereotypes, exoticism, threatened execution, exploitation, drowning, coercive religious authority, and tragic death.
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The water first appears to offer open movement, then becomes part of the boundary closing around the lovers. I admire the images without treating their beauty as innocence.
— Momo
Credits & versions
Version map
Where to go next
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