Saturday, Jul. 05, 2003 / 2:12 p.m.

~On the Migratory Birds Movie Mostly~

I am really confused. I think I missed something. Have I not been watching the news? Reading it? Why does Bush care so much about Liberia??? What's REALLY going on? Since when does he care about any African country? I remember during one of the Presidential debates it seemed like he didn't even know where Africa is. His knowledge of foreign policy was nonexistent. This is a former Texas governor, not a statesman. What is going on? Anyone?

Diversion. Yes? Things in Iraq are still really bad, either we're killing them or they're killing us, still, it's still basically a war, though no one would actually use that word. When two sides are opposing and they kill each other instead of sitting down to tea to discuss, yeah, that sounds like war to me.

But moving right along... I watched the Fourth of July festivities on television last night. I'd driven past the site where they hold the very bestest fireworks display every year, after my movie, and it was too early, so I came home. We had horrible heavy rain shortly after I got home, all dark sky and wind and everything, but on the TV they were broadcasting live from that very site, pre-fireworks display live bands playing, shots of people dancing in the crowd (estimated 300,000!), etc. I kept looking out my window, seeing the rain, looking at the TV and the little kids dancing, the old ladies in red white and blue sequins, clearly not in the rain, and thinking, I do not live that far away, that's impossible.

But for once, watching on TV was really good. The different kinds of pyrotechnics deployed (is that the right word?, employed?) were really amazing. Not just your typical chrysanthemum burst, oh no, some that went up and then spread apart and dripped down, or went up and burst like shooting stars, impossible to describe using a non-pyro's vocabulary, but truly unique. And I know, they showed some others at another location on the evening news, and they were ho hum, big balls of color, not at all the same thing.

Nice. So glad I was home, lying on sofa, Gladys on my lap, cozy, comfy, not surrounded by too many people, not craning my neck to look up in the sky, just over to the television. And the camerawork was good this year too, some shots from the skycopter, some from the ground, and switching just at the right time, and only one of an audience member in awe, good job. Too many of those shots piss me off, let's see the show, not the people watching the show.

I saw "Winged Migration" yesterday, pre-display site drive by, and it's still on my mind. The thing that's really striking about it is that not long into the film, maybe 10 minutes, you feel you are a part of the flock. You are flying with them (perhaps because the camera is - AMAZING cinematography!!!), and when something bad happens to any one of them, you feel it, not just like you're watching some nature docu, but like you're just being there with them, you're migrating too. There wasn't a lot of bad, but we all expect it every time we watch a wildlife docu, and "Nature" used to be famous for it, so much so that I gave up watching their films.

They'd show the animals in question, or the region, birth to death, everyday life in between, then how humans are fucking up their habitat to the point that in 5.7 years they will no longer exist. Whee! Slit your wrists now, there's no hope for a future with animals in it, they'd imply.

I got to a point where my emotions could no longer take the investment of some 45 minutes in a certain species' life, say lemurs maybe, to only find out that there is little hope for their ulitmate survival in the wild. It's Zoos or nothing.

But this film wasn't like that, not at all, in fact it made it seem that there are wonderful wild places still, on our planet, in which exist nothing but wild life, in which there is nothing but glacier or grassland or ocean or plain or prairie or mountain, and the waterfowl flying above twice a year. Beautiful, truly.

The birds were so very beautiful, the ones with black and white spots, the parrots in the Amazon with blue and red feathers, the cranes with their graceful long necks and legs, the geese with their sturdy wings, seeming to hold conversations during their long flights. One bird, and I cannot remember the name of it, flies from Antarctic to Artic, some 12,000 miles each way, to migrate. Who knew? (we learn this technical info through brief and infrequent statistical subtitles - throughout, there is little but bird sounds and background music)

The bad parts to which I alluded earlier? They are stuck with me - more than the statistics or the names of the different types of birds shown - and I shall list said bad parts here, so if anyone is reading and doesn't want to know, you're warned.

Remember those old Disney produced animal films, the ones with that same male narrator, the one who would try to guess what the poor bear cub or snake or whatever was thinking? And the camera would catch the cub getting caught in a trap or something, and part of you would wonder, Did they set that up, or what? Well, in "Winged Migration" (that link, by the way, is the official movie web site - check it out, it's very cool!!) there are a few scenes where one wonders that too. Like the goose hunt. We don't know there's a goose hunt going on, we're just watching the geese fly, we're right there in the sky next to them, there's no narration (just at certain points, some basic migratory info, very little narration at all - by French director, in English with heavy French accent) to let us know, but there's a gunshot, and one bird goes down, sort of spiraling, wings flapping, diving into the water below, then another gunshot, and another spiral descent to death, and another, and any remaining fly and fly and fly, and their lives depend on it, but perhaps the entire flock is taken out.

Startling. And a bit deceptive. How were we to know the camerapeople had found the goose hunt and were going to be filming it?

And the beautiful orange and black and white birds who decide to fly/swim/waddle through some factory's output, hot water outtake, sludge, etc. What was THAT about? And how did the camerapeople know this was going to happen? It almost feels as if they coaxed the birds to be there, and when the one gets stuck in the sludge, and the others just keep going, well, are humans the only animals who might stop to help that poor misguided adventurer bird out? I mean if he were a human and we were the birds who waddled away? That whole five minutes, or however long it took for us all to keep sucking in our breath as we watched them get closer and closer to their doom was interminable, just horrible. Nothing but some music in the background, and all of us thinking, "Well, no way would I have gone over there, that's a fucking factory, that's probably all horribly toxic water, why in hell are they DRINKING it??!?!?!!?" But they're birds, you know?

I detailed the scene with the bird with the broken wing who lands on the desert sands only to be encountered by a gang of crabs with eyes on long poles atop their heads elsewhere, but it's worth noting here as well, just because these images are all sort of stuck in my head and maybe if I write them here they'll go away? Poor little bird, what a way to go, and to see it coming, that's the hard part, like those people in "Night of the Living Dead" or something, there's no escape, that damned wing is broken, no way to hop fast enough, those crabs have too many legs, and look how many there are, and then thankfully we cut to the crabs all piled atop their prey, like something out of "Lord of the Flies", maybe "Lord of the Crabs", I don't know.

No death scenes, other than the geese shot out of the sky, most is implied, sort of, "Oh shit, here it comes", then, "Yep, it came".

One more, the penguins. They migrate too, apparently, but no, they don't fly. I forget the name of the type of penguin, I didn't retain any of the pertinent information at all, but I can still see it all in my mind's eye, but they walk upright, as penguins do, and they swim in the ocean, which is strange enough, yes? A bird that swims? Not just like a duck or a goose or a swan, or a crane, but like a dolphin, up and down in the waves. Great distances. And then on land, on two feet. But they stop to mate and breed and raise their young, perpetuation of the species and all that. And rightly so.

So, yeah, there's this scene, ah motherhood, mother penguin standing over her young chick (chick?), and it's all gray and fuzzy, nothing like her white and yellow and black, and she sits almost on top of it, when this ugly bird comes along, not a penguin at all, but more dodo-ish looking, with big curved beak, the better to eat your young with, and she pecks it away, and so does her pal, her mate, whoever, and little do they know, there's one behind them too! Cue stabbing violin music!!! The other one grabs the youngster by its neck and it's squealing and squawking and so is the mother and all the other penguins, and there are like five trillion penguins on these rocks, and maybe just these two dodo-ish ugly birds with blood on their curved beaks, and the one snaps the neck of the youngster, and as this film goes, cut, cut, then closeup of bloody beak, and shot of one penguin doing this sort of agonized looking wail. Possibly unrelated, but it looked appropriate.

Horrible stuff. But that's life. Prey. Predator. All of life. Even us. We're predators, animals (and some other humans) are our prey. It's all a big cycle, and that's okay, sort of, if you can find a way to accept it.

Fantastic film, I'm so glad I saw it. Only now am I looking at reviews online and it's mixed. Some were awed, truly amazed by the beauty, others are so critical, there wasn't enough narration, or what there was is too cold, too dry, and it's too repetitive, watching the same birds fly and fly, or it's spiritually wondrous and life affirming, etc., etc. Very mixed. I think it may depend on who you are, what you think of it. What you want from a movie, what you feel about birds in general, and what you feel about life and the capturing of it on film. I'm not sure I wanted it to end, and yes I was filled with questions whilst watching, but I knew this wasn't an instructional film, this wasn't your typical National Geo docu, not at all, and that's why I liked it so much.

**Brief Addendum to note that in this review by Eleanor Ringel Gillespie of the AJC, she notes the lack of anthropomorphizing in "Winged Migration" that was apparent in those old Disney films, just like I did! Wow. And... she says the filmmakers rescued the bird with the broken wing from the crabs. I don't know if that's true, or if it is true, if it was wise, but it's nice to think it happened. It's a rather harrowing scene. I love the Interweb, being able to read up on something after, or before, the fact, do research. There are a LOT of reviews written on this film, and they're all seemingly online. Apparently this docu went up against "Bowling For Columbine" this past Oscar season, and of course we know who won, but now having seen both, this film is more deserving, truly!!

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