The Hard Road to Klondike is the story of a life of such hard physical grind that it makes a nonsense of that catchphrase of our times: "I'm overworked." This starkly beautiful documentary about Donegal-born Mici MacGowan makes compelling viewing.
MacGowan was born in 1865, in the far-north-Donegal parish of Cloughaneely, near Falcarragh. Decades later, the inspirational folklorist, Sean O hEochaidh, recorded and transcribed his story. An edited version of this transcription was later published in both Irish and English.
It is this spare (English) narrative of MacGowan's experiences as an emigrant, read with just the right mixture of darkness and light by Stephen Rea, which underscores The Hard Road to Klondike.
When MacGowan was still no more than a child, he was sent to the hiring fair in Letterkenny. His father had just died from fever, leaving a large family behind. At this point, the documentary shows rarely-seen footage of a hiring fair: throughout the film, archival footage is spliced into present-day location shots.
The scenes of the hiring fair have all the potency of trapped history: man and beast mixed together as one on the street; women with blank-eyed stares wrapped in long shawls; the stick-wielding farmers inspecting the souls for hire. This minute or two of grainy silent film is more powerful than any subsequent reconstruction could ever be.
After years as boy and youth on a Lagan farm, MacGowan went to the potato fields of Scotland. From there he headed to the US: "It couldn't get any worse," is his laconic reasoning. There, he worked in Montana at the silvermines - work as hard and poorly paid as the work which he had done on the other side of the Atlantic.
Again, it is archival footage which provides fascinating windows into the territory of the past. The Native American women in Montana, pictured swathed in shawls and with inscrutable looks, look astonishingly like the shots of their Donegal sisters at the hiring fair.
In addition to using contemporary and archival footage, the documentary-makers have also selected clips from a variety of wild west films and turn-of-the-century silent movies to illustrate the period. There are clips from The Great Train Robbery, The Darkening Trail, The Girl Alaska, and The Red Kimono, and these add greatly to the atmosphere.
The price of silver tumbled in 1896, and hard-won savings petered out. MacGowan's dream of returning to Ireland with pockets full of money seemed as elusive as ever. But on St Patrick's Day in 1898, the folk in Montana heard the word "Klondike" for the first time; a word of alchemy which was to transform the lives of many.
That winter, the gold rush was under way. From all over the world, men started making the journey up the Yukon River into Alaska and towards the mines where gold had been found. It took MacGowan and his companions six months to make the tortured journey, much of it on foot, from Montana through the Rockies to Seattle and the icy north.
There is footage of railways, and paddle boats, and the bleak northern icefields. Watching the reconstruction of the journey is to realise something of the determination and desperation which drove these men - and they were almost exclusively men - to try their luck prospecting in the gold fields.
Interspersed among the film clips and the narrative of MacGowan's story are interviews with the surviving members of his family. There are also contributions from a Montana historian of Irish emigration, David Emmons, and Native American folklorist Gary White Deer. Both these men explore the similarities in the experiences of exile of the Irish in America, and the Native Americans, who were effectively exiled in their own country.
The documentary is also overlaid with the haunting songs of Iarla O Lionaird, Christine Tobin, and Lillis O Laoire.
MacGowan almost died of frostbite on the journey north, and was abandoned by his companions - also from his native Donegal - as a result. He recovered, after being found and cared for by Indians. The ensuing bitterness which he felt for his erstwhile friends affected him profoundly.
This was an era of survival and selfishness, when nobody could trust anyone else, when men killed on the way to Klondike were left unburied at the side of the track, when robbery of those making their way back down with their gold was rife, when hardness reigned.
At Klondike, MacGowan did strike a small working of gold, enough to make the trip just about worthwhile. He had been working in hard physical labour for almost three decades by then. Unlike many who emigrated, Mici MacGowan returned home, so there is an uplifting end to this fine documentary. With his pocketful of gold, MacGowan bought a farmhouse in Donegal, where the remaining members of his family live to this day.
The Hard Road to Klondike (Rotha Mor an tSaoil), RTE 1, 8 p.m., Monday