Brian Winston cautions against unconditionally praising Flaherty’s poetic talent. He argues we have to acknowledge his manipulations and distortions because that is at the heart of understanding both his genius and his contribution to the documentary form. What Flaherty grasped was not only our desire for drama, but that it should arise from the life being observed and not imposed from without. By using drama and reconstruction, Flaherty created a unique form of documentary, which thrives between “a life as lived and life as narrativised.”