Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life
Director: Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack
Year Released: 1925
Rating: 3.0
Cooper and Schoedsack take the astonishingly long and difficult trip with Persian farmers and their families and livestock in the search for the very same plant life I spend so much of my damned summer mowing repeatedly. Visually breathtaking, even in its dated, eroded form - which, like Murnau's Nosferatu and other aging classic, only adds to the otherworldliness - and features some shots (of what can only be thousands of people marching in unison) that must have been supremely challenging to pull off. It does not have the same level of emotional potency as, say, Flaherty's Nanook of the North (for example) because of the focus on a group rather than individuals, though it remains a neat little time capsule.
