According to Barsam, “Flaherty’s subjective view of reality – his making it all up – has a romantic basis, idealizing the simple, natural even non-existent life.” He argues that even though Flaherty habitually transforms reality, his essential achievement is that of the realist filmmaker. The idea of Flaherty as Romantic is shared by Aufderheide: “Flaherty had a powerful romantic belief in the purity of native cultures and he believed that his own culture was spiritually impoverished by comparison.” Taken to the extreme, this approach makes no attempt to capture reality but create a romanticized picture of it: “The tragedy is that, being a poet, with a poet's eye, Flaherty’s lie is greater, for he can make romance seem real.”