hyped garbage

Good movie but grossly overrated

Excellent but underrated film

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

HAPPY PEOPLE is another sterling documentary from Werner Herzog, this time exploring rural life in Siberia. Herzog is my favourite documentary filmmaker so it's a natural that I'd enjoy this movie and it's just as good as the rest of his work. For much of the running time this film follows around trappers as they strive to survive in an inhospital landscape. There are stunning landscape shots and nature photography as well as animals, dogs, and handicrafts. We watch the trappers set their traps and build canoes and cabins while lengthy interviews with the wilderness people really get to the heart of the subject at hand. As is usual for Herzog, he takes a little-known subject and explores it in depth in a fascinating way.

First of all, I don't want anyone to think that I don't consider this to be a film of the highest quality. It was extremely informative, and overall quite entertaining and well made. My quibble with it is this: not one single person portrayed in the film fit anything that I would consider to be a description of "Happy". In fact, most of them seemed downright somber if not dour the whole time. Perhaps the film makers got the sense that the people who lived in this remote Siberian village were, in fact, quite happy people while they were there making this (extremely well made) film, but that sense of happiness was not conveyed to the watcher. Their lives seemed dismal and harsh at best, and none of them had an attitude about life that reflected anything different than that they lived a dismal life in a harsh and unforgiving world. While it is a look at the way people probably lived several hundred years ago (minus the snowmobiles and chainsaws), I for one do not envy them in the least. I'm sure it can be terribly exciting to encounter dangerous wild animals and harsh unforgiving elements in the wilderness, but without ANY real modern amenities, the lives led by the people in this movie have to be without a doubt what most of us would consider to be mind- numbingly boring. Not to mention lonesome. Months in the wilderness trapping small fur-bearing animals with only the company of a dog or two, does not seem like the making of a "happy" life to me. I was expecting some sense of enlightenment to come across in the film as to why people who live in such bleak and harsh conditions would be in some way happier than the rest of us, but that never came. If you are expecting that sort of enlightenment, then you may be disappointed. However, the film does indeed prove to be quite engaging and entertaining, portraying the inhabitants of this region of Siberia as hard-working, industrious and without a doubt some of the toughest people left on earth. Your deer hunting, Cabella's swag wearing neighbor (or uncle, or cousin ...) only wishes he could be a fraction of the outdoors-man these rugged Russians are. It's likely that if a guy like that were to trade places with one of the trappers in the movie for even a single day, he would not make it through that day alive. It's a film worth watching, but I'm just wondering how on earth the film makers could describe these as "Happy People".

Saw this one a couple of years ago and was really stunned with the quality of this documentary.Movie crew lived through a year in Bakhta, small simple village of huntsmen and fishermen in Siberia, and they have done an amazing job of showing how simple life, hard (you bet) labour and everlasting circle of life make people... pure. Happy.There's not a hint of falseness, no pathos, no complaints. And that's probably what got to me the most: perfect documentary, no opinion imposed, just showing this life 'as is' - and the clarity of it strikes you, urban people, deep to the core.Must see, really.

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