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Your Gateway to Music and More from a Christian Perspective Slow down as you approach the gate, and have your change ready.... |
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Your Gateway to Music and More from a Christian Perspective Slow down as you approach the gate, and have your change ready.... |
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Winged Migration (Documentary) Directed and narrated by Jacques Perrin Scriptwriters: Jacques Perrin and Stephane Durand Photographer: Bernard Lutic, Thierry Machado and Dominique Gentil Music: Bruno Coulais Sony Pictures Classics Running Time: 90 minutes Rating: G Nominated for a 2002 Academy Award in Documentary When was the last time you sat back in a movie theater seat and simply watched the screen in amazement? (I’m not talking about comic book heroes here). The documentary, _Winged Migration_, is truly a labor of love for director Jacques Perrin, as he follows the migration of birds around the globe. There is little narration and only an occasional sentence or two caption that divides the film into sections such as Antarctica. The film was done over a four-year time span, utilizing robot gliders that literally flew with the birds to give you breathtaking camera shots. You can hear the birds breathing and see the streamlined bodies go into the wind, muscle by muscle. The birds seem un daunted by having cameras so near. To say the photography, helmed by Bernard Lutic, Thierry Machado and Dominique Gentil is extraordinary is an understatement. No special or digital effects here, this is real with a capital R. You are there from the beginning of the film, where a solitary, red-breasted bird feeds its young in an English tree to watching an ocean bird with broken wing trying to avoid a group of sand crabs with dinner on their minds. There are birds that dive for fish and birds that skulk under water and in mud for food. Birds who build nests on steep, craggy cliffs and birds who nest in an open field where farm implements are a danger. I’m guessing the Sand Hill Crane portion was filmed in central Nebraska where the birds darken the sky when coming in for a landing. We also see birds on migration routes that take them past the Statue of Liberty and the late Twin Towers, to birds that cross the North Atlantic or the Sahara Desert. Some migrations are 600 miles and others are 4200 miles. As the narrator points out, this is for survival, for without it, that particular bird may die. Bruno Coulais’ soundtrack provides music for each country or continent that is photographed. Alas, some of the footage is marred by the gunshots of hunters who provide another danger for migrating birds. From the view of the birds, though, man is but a dot on the landscape and the horizon provides a destination and hope. Copyright 2003 Marie Asner
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