Although Happy People feels cobbled together, Herzog and Vasyukov do provide us with some pretty astounding images.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 19, 2019

Puts things in perspective, offering a welcome respite from a world of hustle and bustle that has become all too superficial.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 6, 2019

Herzog lends the golden touch that is his voice to the film, making the grueling, harsh winter landscape lyrical and poetic.

| Original Score: 8.7/10 | Apr 12, 2019

Every documentary could use the Werner Herzog touch.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 14, 2018

Cut down from a four-hour documentary by Vasyukov, the result is a film lacking in catastrophic tragedies of any sort that holds you nonetheless with its raw view of lives spurning quotidian modern comforts with a vengeance.

| Mar 23, 2013

"Happy People" seems to strain toward the notion that harsh nature makes for a pure heart. And perhaps it does for some. But all?

| Original Score: C | Mar 15, 2013

In a very real sense, we are watching Herzog watch this film, his rapturous reaction illuminating as much about himself as his subjects.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 7, 2013

Titling a documentary about snowbound Siberian fur trappers "Happy People" is not as ironic as it seems.

| Mar 7, 2013

Quirky and a little scary and rapturous all at the same time.

| Mar 5, 2013

It's not that Happy People is uninteresting... It's just that the one sensibility of which we were previously aware -- that of Herzog's -- is indiscernible, as if frozen beneath all this movie's ice.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 28, 2013

Herzog's longing for the ideological purity in which these lives are lived, free of paperwork and bureaucracy, taxes and technology, drives the film, which lacks an overall story arc.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 28, 2013

Unmistakably part of the director's canon, and just as unmistakably a minor addition to it.

| Original Score: B- | Feb 23, 2013

A stirring meditation on the human spirit in extreme conditions, Happy People also reflects Herzog's passion and fascination for the often unforgiving nature of the wild.

| Original Score: B+ | Feb 23, 2013

From Siberia, with Happiness

| Feb 22, 2013

It's a minor film from a major director but it's still a strong one for those interested in its subject matter - how people can still co-exist with and live off the land instead of ignoring or abusing it.

| Original Score: 3.5/5.0 | Feb 22, 2013

It's a do-it-yourself world that Herzog clearly admires - much of what we see is the men performing the tasks that enable them to survive.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 22, 2013

They decidedly don't seem happy. And "Happy People's" decision to skate down the frozen Yenisei without examining their unhappiness more closely leaves a slight chill.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 22, 2013

Herzog ... continues his streak of well-crafted documentaries with surprising subjects.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 21, 2013

Albeit a found film of sorts, Happy People is very much of a piece with Herzog's other work, examining man's place in the natural world, looking at man's history and man's ability to survive, to endure.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 15, 2013

Primarily following one veteran sable trapper through his primitive but fascinating annual routine, the movie also features clouds of mosquitoes thick enough to inspire phantom itching in viewers.

| Original Score: B+ | Feb 14, 2013