Man Of Aran

Not a new release but a recent discovery here at The Skinny's DVD reviews, this disc accompanies the British Sea Power album of the same name and features a version of Robert Flaherty's 1934 documentary with a soundtrack composed and performed by the band. Initially, the sound of driving guitars and feedback can be disconcerting, but this is a magical transformation of a film that has been dismissed as an anachronistic irrelevance. For Flaherty, whom his supporters called 'The Innocent Eye', was also innocent of any idea of documentary fidelity, constructing in Man of Aran a fantasy of primitive living that had little relevance to the Aran islanders lives. But BSP's sometimes eerie, often raging soundtrack sweeps away the director's tired romanticism, and allows us to appreciate the incredible detail of rocks, cliffs and sea that he captured in his stark images, the intensely modern, Soviet-influenced editing, and the extraordinary shark hunt which comes straight from the pages of Moby Dick. [Keir Roper-Caldbeck]