Documentaries come in all shapes and sizes – from the political urgency of Michael
Moore’s Fahrenheit 911, to Werner Herzog’s meditative Cave of Forgotten
Dreams.
Some are funny, like Errol Morris’ 1997 film Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control.
And others are earnest and striking, like 13th, Ava DuVernay’s examination of mass
incarceration.
The best ones use many of the same cinematic and storytelling techniques as fiction films
to explore their characters and themes, and take audiences on an emotional journey.
And Otto Bell’s 2015 film The Eagle Huntress fits that bill.
It tells a nonfiction story using traditional cinematic techniques and ultra-modern equipment,
all without sacrificing the heart of the tale.
[Intro Music Plays]
Director Otto Bell found his inspiration in
a few still images published by the BBC in 2014.
They showed a young Kazakh girl in traditional dress with an enormous eagle hoisted on her
arm, or launching into flight.
Within a year, Bell had packed some gear, enlisted a few crew members, and traveled
to one of the most remote locations in the world: deep in the heart of Mongolia.
And what he found there was an extraordinary character and an underdog story.
Now, during Crash Course Film History and Production, we talked a lot about film as
an illusion of reality.
Filmmakers use the tools of cinema – things like shots, cuts, sound, and narrative structure
– to trick us into believing what we’re seeing.
The whole point is to make an audience feel something, whether it’s fear, joy, or heartbreak.
A director wants us to experience the story with the characters.
Documentaries are no different.
They’re illusions of reality too.
I mean, sure, the characters they depict are by and large real people.
And the stories actually happened.
But documentaries use the same basic techniques as fiction films.
And the best ones use those cinematic tricks in good faith.
They might collapse time or choose out-of-sequence reaction shots, but only in ways that remain
true to the spirit, theme, or subject of the story.
In The Eagle Huntress, those film techniques are beautifully harnessed to tell the story
of Aisholpan Nurgaiv, a 13-year-old Kazakh girl living in Mongolia who dreams of becoming
an eagle huntress.
Eagle hunters have both a practical and cultural significance to Aisholpan’s nomadic people.
Eagles are used to hunt game for fur and meat.
But they’re also used to compete in festivals and competitions, where eagle hunters test
their horseback, hunting, and eagle-calling skills.
The film opens with sweeping aerial shots of the mountains and plains of Mongolia.
These could just as easily be the opening shots of a Lord of the Rings movie, they’re
so epic.
And in the first scene, we see an older man riding a horse to a far-off mountaintop.
He’s there to release his eagle back into the wild after seven years as his hunting
companion, as per tradition.
We sense this man’s deep connection to the bird, as he offers it a final meal and then
rides off, never to see it again.
From there, we meet our protagonist, Aisholpan, who lives with her parents and siblings in
a yurt-like tent.
We learn that she’s always idolized her father and grandfather, who are both prize-winning
eagle hunters.
She wants to follow in their eagle hunting footsteps.
Something relatively few women are doing.
And just like that, we’re on her side.
The film has given us a compelling protagonist with a clear goal and obstacles.
We’re pulling for her, and her father is pulling for her, too.
As he trains her in the techniques of eagle hunting, he tells us, “I don’t want to
let her down.”
The film then introduces us to a group of older, conservative, male eagle hunters.
None of them believe a girl should be allowed to learn how to eagle hunt.
It’s a man’s job.
But they’ve never met Aisholpan!
She’s tenacious, hard-working, and – we’re told – naturally gifted.
She’s also a 13-year-old girl, who takes care of her brother and sister at her boarding
school, paints her nails, and giggles with her friends.
In one of the film’s most thrilling sequences, we see Aisholpan and her father track an eagle
to its nest, high on a rocky cliff.
There they discover two eaglets.
Her father ties a rope around her waist, and she clambers down the cliff face to capture
her very own eagle.
From there, the training ramps up, until it’s time for Aisholpan to compete in her first
eagle festival, which takes place in Ölgii, Mongolia.
She’s up against men three, four, or even five times her age, with years of experience
and competition titles.
And still, in event after event, Aisholpan holds her own.
Her eagle even sets a speed record, flying from high atop a hill to her arm in less than
five seconds.
Spoiler alert: against all odds, she wins first place in the festival, raising her trophy
overhead in triumph, surrounded by a cheering crowd.
It’s a powerful moment.
But it’s not enough for the chorus of elder eagle hunters.
They’re dismissive, and some even change course and claim that her youth and gender
gave her an edge.
Lastly, the documentary follows Aisholpan and her father as they pack up and ride off into
the snowy wilderness, hunting for a fox.
They work together, father and daughter, for days.
And after several missteps and some seriously deep snow, Aisholpan and her eagle finally
spot, chase, and bring down a wild fox.
In the film’s final moments, her father straps the fox to her saddle and they ride off for
home, not just as father and daughter, but as a pair of true eagle hunters.
The Eagle Huntress is a simple movie.
And that’s part of its power.
The film distills its themes beautifully and presents such a winning and offhandedly-heroic
protagonist, that it feels easy.
But... it wasn’t.
Like, at all.
We don’t judge the quality of a film based on how hard it was to make, but director Otto
Bell and his skeleton crew deserve special mention for capturing the images and sounds
that bring this story to life.
First, they traveled to a bitterly cold, remote region of Mongolia, and relied on very modern
technology to tell this story about a longstanding tradition.
Relatively lightweight digital cameras allowed them to travel and work in these far-flung
locations.
Drones allowed the filmmakers to create tracking shots, crane shots, and those glorious opening
aerials without the expense of dolly tracks, helicopters, and actual cranes.
Mini Go-Pro cameras strapped to Aisholpan gave us a first-hand view of her climb down
to the eagle’s nest and the first interaction she has with her eagle.
Those same cameras, attached to the eagles themselves, provided us a glimpse of their
point of view as they soared through the sky.
Second, they integrated themselves into the lives of Aisholpan, her family, her friends,
and the older eagle hunters.
Aisholpan was understandably shy at first.
It took time and patience to get her to open up and speak conversationally in front of
the cameras.
And third, they did it all while trying to remain respectful of her culture.
Documentaries aim to depict real people in real situations, but they’re still illusions
of that reality.
So these films bear a different kind of ethical burden than fiction films.
And no one in The Eagle Huntress comes off mocked by the film or filmmakers – not even
the old men who look down on Aisholpan.
They’re presented as wrong-headed and misguided, for sure.
But it’s also clear that they’re grappling with a changing world.
This brings us to one way to look at this kind of film: as an ethnographic study of
a longstanding culture within the modern age.
The roots of this documentary film tradition trace all the way back to one of the first
feature documentary films, Robert J. Flaherty’s Nanook of the North
made in 1922.
Nanook took audiences deep into the frigid Canadian arctic to follow the struggles of
an Inuk man and his family.
That film, however, has been roundly criticized for distorting or even fabricating events
to make the Inuk culture seem more exotic and out of step with the contemporary world.
In real life, the main character wasn’t named Nanook, didn’t have a wife, and hunted
with rifles, not spears as the film shows.
By all accounts, The Eagle Huntress is a more culturally respectful and honest film.
Rather than exoticize Aisholpan, the filmmakers seem more interested in presenting her real
life.
By doing that, it actually makes this remote culture feel familiar.
While we do see her in traditional dress and riding horseback, we see her wearing denim
jeans and modern coats.
Her family rides motorbikes and trucks, as well as horses.
And one shot even shows us a portable solar panel that the family packs up with them when
they travel.
The juxtaposition of ancient tradition and modern life is driven home when Aisholpan
and her father travel to Ölgii, the largest town for a hundred miles.
A series of shots follow them riding horses across vast empty landscapes, eagles perched
on their arms, dressed in traditional furs.
Then we see them riding into town, along roads, next to cars, and past stores.
It’s as if they’ve ridden out of the past, right into the present.
Which, by some interpretation, is how Aisholpan functions within her culture.
She’s taking on the traditional practice of eagle hunting, and doing it as a contemporary
woman.
Now, The Eagle Huntress has been criticized for distorting Kazakh and Mongolian culture,
so it’s not a perfect ethnographic study.
Stanford historian Adrienne Mayor suggests that this documentary may have focused too
much on making Aisholpan’s story seem unique and filled with adversity.
Mayor points out that there were many female eagle hunters throughout history, and that
there are several active ones today.
Women like Makpal Abdrazakova, whose story has been reported on since 2011.
And even though the head-shaking elders add to the drama and conflict of the film, Mayor
and others say that Mongolia isn’t a misogynistic culture.
Even though Western audiences and filmmakers might assume that of nomadic societies or
other countries.
Aisholpan’s parents’ constant support of her and her passion for eagle hunting is
genuine, but may not be as unusual as the documentary implies.
Other eagle hunters and people of Mongolian communities have said that women were never
discouraged from this tradition.
And there’s evidence that women have consistently had important roles and opportunities in these
societies.
So this could be a case where the director had a story in mind because of what he filmed
and his assumptions, rather than what he researched.
And it led to a slightly askew portrait of the truth.
Still, The Eagle Huntress works as a traditional hero’s journey, and an examination of an
long-lived society in an increasingly modern world.
Sometimes the simplest stories pack the biggest punch.
It’s a beautifully made documentary about a young girl who embraces her culture, works
to master an old art, overcomes her obstacles, and – through hard work and fearlessness
– claims her place in the world.
And next time, we’ll make our way to Miami for a look at the intimate, heartrending coming-of-age
drama and Best Picture Oscar winner Moonlight.
Crash Course Film Criticism is produced in association with PBS Digital Studios.
You can head over to their channel to check out a playlist of their latest amazing shows,
like The Art Assignment, Physics Girl, and Reactions.
This episode of Crash Course was filmed in the Doctor Cheryl C. Kinney Crash Course Studio
with the help of these nice people and our amazing graphics team is Thought Cafe.