DVD Review
Winged Migration: An Inverse Review
By Elise Faike
faikeatp AT yahoo.com
December, 2003
BEFORE
Moth-eaten as this sounds, much has been written about Winged Migration, a recent nature movie by Jacques Perrin. You’ve no doubt read some of it, as I have, or even seen the movie. My father-in-law, who enjoys nature but usually doesn’t keep up with this stuff, saw it before I did and said it was good. My best friends, who are birders-in-training, gave me a postcard from it and told me they loved it.
All this gangs up on me, because I want to watch Winged Migration too, but I live in Challis, ID in America’s Outback, a place without theaters to speak of or other such amenities, and it’s unusually hard for me to find an easy place to see new movies.
But now there are DVDs, and one day out of the blue Andy Birch asked me if I’d like to review Winged Migration for Surfbirds. Yes! Please! He sent a copy and I scheduled a screening for the weekend with my husband Dave and other deprived Challisites.
What I heard about Winged Migration is that you don’t want to watch the "Making Of" section before you see the actual movie because it could wreck it for you, and you want to watch it in a dark room on as big a screen as possible, preferably a real or home theater.
It also it sounds like there’s plenty of eye-to-eye footage of flying birds from all continents, photographers are flying along with them in ultra-lights, and there’s a dying bird section. Maybe it will also have some great "Name the Scenery" quizzes in it. In theaters it’s supposedly in French with subtitles I’ll have to read, but the cover says: "Language: English", and "Subtitles: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi". Hindi? Besides the "Making Of" section, the cover also mentions a list of other "Captivating Special Features", something everybody likes about DVDs.
I’ll see if I can add any extra insights...
AFTER
My copy of Winged Migration is in English. Narration is minimal, so we enjoyed narrating it ourselves, while playing Name the Scenery and Name That Bird. There are subtitles to read anyway (in English), but they’re additional information about migration distances and comments like "The Greater Sage Grouse lives in Idaho" (we keyed on that one). The soundtrack is good. We couldn’t understand most of the songs since they sound like they’re in Scandanavian or High Elven. The part in English was equally strange, but pleasant.
There is eye-to-eye ultra-light footage, and the scenery is incredible. Not just some parts, but each and every frame is astoundingly beautiful. Almost. There’s a shot of the Twin Towers—Winged Migration took four years to film--, but I hated the brief industrial birding sections. And somehow I expected a complete chronology of every kind of migrating bird (in 89 minutes!), but it mostly follows or flies alongside imprintable waterfowl like Stringfoot and there aren’t many scenes of passerines. Who knows, maybe next we’ll get Winged Warblers with Sid Gauthreux or Hawk Watch by Clark and Wheeler?
We didn’t watch "Making Of" first, and actually haven’t viewed all of that yet, nor did we check out the other "Captivating Special Features". But everyone agreed: Winged Migration was definitely worth seeing. We’re watching it again.
Read the Jacques Perrin Surfbirds interview here >>
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