Redford, working every corner of his boat, takes us back to the Inuit hunter Nanook, in Robert J. Flaherty’s “Nanook of the North” (1922), methodically cutting a hole in the ice to catch a seal.
Since Nanook of the North (1927), it has proved a useful guiding principle for documentaries, particularly such city symphonies as Man with A Movie Camera and I Am Cuba.