A very good movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since it seemed to have a decent reputation (it was even included in the ‘1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die’ list at some point but it was removed fairly quickly afterwards). Well, I have to admit that I had no idea what this movie was about before watching the damned thing but it turned out to be so fascinating after all. Indeed, they went actually way beyond simply telling the tale of this astonishing discovery, they actually went all the way back to the foundation of the city itself. Well, while this approach might seem odd, in my opinion, it actually made sense and I think there was no other way to properly explain how all these ancient films could be found this way. The fact that the story of Dawson City was just so intriguing also helped and to see this story with no reconstruction but with some vintage pics and some ancient movies almost just as old the actual events that took place at the time was actually quite mesmerizing. It’s too bad that, on a few occasions, they did deviate too much from the main topic as they focused instead on some really random events which had, in my opinion, nothing to do with Dawson City and/or the discovery of these nitrate movies (WWI, the White Sox scandal, the deportation of Alexander Berkman,…). The other thing which was a little bit disappointing to me was the fact that, among the 100’s of movies they found out, it didn’t seem that they did find a real lost masterpiece but above all some really obscure movies. Anyway, to conclude, I thought it was a really mesmerizing documentary and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are a movie buff like me.