December 2003

Winged Migration (Le Peuple migrateur) (Directors: Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud, France, 2001): This is less a doc­u­mentary than a visual poem about the beauty of flight. The film fol­lows sev­eral spe­cies of migratory birds (ducks, geese, cranes, swans) on their flights and the exper­i­ence is one of actu­ally flying with the birds. It’s quite amazing, but would be more powerful as an IMAX film. If you have a big TV, rent it right away. Otherwise, wait for it to be on a large screen near you.

I also watched the “making-of” doc­u­mentary (at 53 minutes, it’s almost as long as the 90 minute fea­ture), and it kind of wrecks the illu­sion to find out that the birds are more akin to actors in a film than sub­jects in a doc­u­mentary. That’s all I’ll say.

(8/10)

Tagged as: birds, Documentaries, DVD, nature, wildlife

{ Comments on this entry are closed }