Kon Tiki: An Exploration into Documentary

Thor Heyerdahl's Kon Tiki represents a turning point in the history of the documentary film. This particular piece of cinema, not only brings a sense of adventure and excitement to a segment of filmmaking that is infamous for its methodical and fact-based structure, but it also conveys interesting and informative through an almost narrative like conceit, that of an expedition from the Asiatic fringe to the Polynesian islands on a raft called Kon Tiki. This idea of expedition represents a more active approach to documentary filmmaking which in turn allows for the audience to actively participate in the expedition, thus they more easily accept the information given.

            Kon Tiki is an intriguing film that not only presents documentary as an active filmmaking endeavor, but  also suggests that the modern documentary is in some cases far removed from the film that birthed it. The idea of the modern documentary derives from the notion that the documentary is meant to suggest a thesis at its start and then concretely answer the thesis by the conclusion. As a result, the modern documentary suffers from the talking head syndrome where other people try to convince an audience that the filmmakers point is valid and factually sound. The reliance on talking heads separates the audience from the information that is presented, effectively erasing the idea of documentation.

Documentary now has become a platform to seek approval from the audience for a certain agenda or idea. Thus the documentary loses its foremost pillar of capturing reality as it is. Heyerdahl’s Kon Tiki therefore, stands in the interesting position, for though most of its innovations, such as diagrams and continual narration are adopted by today's documentarians they neglect the documentary’s need to speak for itself.

Kon Tiki on the other hand allows for a free-form dialogue, one undefined by ideal or agenda to form between both audience and documentarian. Heyerdahl in a sense does not craft a documentary, but instead a journey of discovery that both scientist and audience embark on together. The film has no barrier of entry, no need for previous knowledge, and ultimately no prior agenda that deceives the uninitiated into blanketly believing the facts that the documentary presents.

The film forms a relationship with its audience which grows over time to increase both the audience’s knowledge  and also that of the filmmaker’s. Heyerdahl lets the journey of the Kon Tiki speak for itself through the images and adventures of the crew. Though the film does have continuous narration it seems as if Heyerdahl is reading from a journal and not a script constructed specifically for the film, creating an active audience member. The voiceover also creates the ideas that the voyage of the Kon Tiki continually repeats each time the film is shown. Thus, the narration continually allows for the images, and does not overpower them in any way. The voiceover also suggests that Heyerdahl and his audience are equals because they both experience the journey at the same time.

 Kon Tiki is a puzzling piece of cinema because it is crafted with the mindset that  science and exploration supersede the notoriety and respect that comes from the completion of such a monumental expedition. As a result Heyerdahl creates a film about discovery. The filmic techniques used throughout the film are evidence of the crew’s desire for exploration and not completion of the journey. Throughout the film Heyerdahl and his camera man allow for the wonder and experience of the journey to pervade all aspects of the documentary. They do this by showing the mundane happening on the raft such as the catching a fish or the discovery of an unknown sea creature. Heyerdahl uses this sense of discovery so effectively that by the conclusion of the film the audience almost forgets why they set out on this journey in the first place.

 Kon Tiki allows audiences to experience documentary filmmaking in its purest form. A form that seeks for scientific proof and the honesty of reality instead of manufacturing said reality to prove a point. The challenges and adventure that the film depicts comes from the mundane and not from an artificially created state of the ordinary. Everything from the fishing, to the diving, and the saving of lives is as truthful as it can possibly be in the medium, because it is unfettered by the opinions of others and is told through the eyes of the individuals who took on the expedition, Thus the film is one of the finest examples of documentary filmmaking because it truly does document.