BuzzFlash Reviews

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"Even in this estimable group, "Winged Migration" ("Le Peuple Migrateur") manages to stand out as a truly special movie, as humbling as it is remarkable. This documentary on the flight patterns of a variety of birds was a recent Oscar nominee, losing out to Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine." For once, I wish there could have been a tie. Perrin brings us up-close to his cast of aviary stars, literally flying along with them on their migratory paths and studying their social fabric as they swoop, dip and dive. It's absolutely mesmerizing."

-- Sacramento Bee


"But facts are not the purpose of "Winged Migration." It wants to allow us to look, simply look, at birds--and that goal it achieves magnificently. There are sights here I will not easily forget. The film opens and closes with long aerial tracking shots showing birds in long-distance flight into the wind, and we realize how very hard it is to fly a thousand miles or more. We see birds stopping to eat (one slides a whole fish down its long neck). We see them feeding their young. We see them courting and mating, and going through chest-thumping rituals that are serious business, if you are a bird. We see cranes locking bills in what looks like play. We see birds trapped in industrial waste. And in a horrifying scene, a bird with a broken wing tries to escape on a sandy beach but cannot elude the crabs that catch it and pile onto the still-living body, all eager for a bite. In nature, as the film reminds us, life is all about getting enough to eat.

How in the world did they get this footage? Lisa Nesselson, Variety's correspondent in Paris, supplies helpful information. To begin with, 225 feet of film were exposed for every foot that got into the movie. And some of the birds were raised to be the stars of the film; they were exposed to the sounds of airplanes and movie cameras while still in the shell, and greeted upon their arrival in the world by crew members. (We remember from "Fly Away Home" that newborn birds assume that whomever they see upon emerging must be a parent.) Some footage was made with cameras in ultralight aircraft. Other shots were taken from hot air balloons. There are shots in which the birds seem to have been scripted--they move toward the camera as it pulls back. And some scenes, I'm afraid, were manufactured entirely in the editing room, as when we see snow birds growing alarmed, we hear an avalanche, and then cut to long shots of the avalanche and matching shots of the birds in flight. Somehow we know the camera was not in the path of the avalanche.

I am pleased, actually, that the film has such a tilt toward the visual and away from information. I wouldn't have wanted the narrator to drone away in my ear, reading me encyclopedia articles and making sentimental comments about the beauty of it all. Life is a hard business, and birds work full time at it. I was shocked by a sequence showing ducks in magnificent flight against the sky, and then dropping one by one as hunters kill them. The birds have flown exhaustingly for days to arrive at this end. It's not so much that I blame the hunters as that I wish the ducks could shoot back."

-- Roger Ebert


Visit the Official "Winged Migration" website.

From an online reviewer:

"Winged Migration is an astonishing achievement. With the help of 450 individuals, including 17 pilots and 14 cinematographers, directors Jacques Perrin, Michael Debats and Jacques Cluzaud, bring to life the migrating habits of a variety of birds throughout the world.

We learn of the red-crowned crane that flies 600 miles from the far east to the Siberian taiga, the sandhill crane that flies 2000 miles from the Central American Plains to the Arctic circle, and the bald eagle that flies 1800 miles from the American West to Alaska, just to name a few. But it is how we learn from these creatures that is pure cinematic symphony. The three directors took 4 years to film Winged Migration and used everything from gliders, planes, helicopters and balloons to get close enough to the flying birds that you would actually think you are one of them. The scene of the Canadian Geese migrating is photographed so magnificently through the Grand Canyon that we can see the reflection of the formation on the stilled morning waters without the simplest distraction of man.

Winged Migration is filled with such imagery. Not soon will I forget the greater sage grouse in Idaho where the birds have expanding chests and have tail-feathers that look as sharp as a porcupine's quills. Nor will I soon forget the scenes where millions of king penguins take over a coastal island or the countless birds diving into the water with such rapid fire like a multiple torpedo hit.

What is really amazing however, is how the filmmakers were able to show the birds in such a format as to give them personalities. We see the arrogance of the Canadian Goose, the fighting nature of the red breasted goose, the relentless tenacity of the captured Amazon parrot and the grieving king penguins after one of their young are eaten."

Review from the Atlanta-Journal Constitution:

"Jacques Perrin's "Winged Migration" is a fine feathered film.

This exquisite documentary/tone poem about birds, migration and the miracle of flight is as eye-catchingly singular as 1996's hymn to insects, "Microcosmos" (which Perrin produced), and as inspirational as a Beethoven symphony. An Oscar nominee this year, it lost to the less worthy "Bowling for Columbine."

This is a movie to be seen and savored. And savored again. Whether it's a flock of wild geese silhouetted against a harvest moon or a screen-filling explosion of seagulls or a bevy of new chicks, all beaks and baby fluff, "Winged Migration" has a mesmerizing yet strangely restful appeal."

From the New York Times Review:

"The breathtaking cinematography of migrating birds in Jacques Perrin's mystical documentary ''Winged Migration'' transports you to an exalted realm where nature operates under its own inviolable laws and humanity is portrayed as a crude, destructive interloper in the natural scheme of things.

The movie, whose few words, spoken by the director, are explanatory captions, offers a sweeping global tour from a bird's-eye view, dressed up with a new-age score by Bruno Coulais of swelling choral music and pulsing beats. (Mr. Coulais also composed the music for Mr. Perrin's insect documentary, ''Microcosmos.'') And as the images of flying birds (along with the often harsh, seemingly urgent sounds of their cries) in perfect, swooping formation accumulate, the film speaks wistfully to humankind's residual longing to soar through the heavens without mechanical help.


For much of the movie, filmed over three years using five crews of more than 450 people, including 17 pilots and 14 cinematographers, the camera flies alongside, above and below many species of birds as they make their annual round trips. In some cases that journey will carry them more than 10,000 miles between the tropics and the Arctic. All sorts of ingenious devices, from remote control gliders to ultra-light aircraft, were used to film the birds, which appear unaware of the technology recording their activities.

Although the movie was filmed on all seven continents, its visits to the Amazon (where you watch a captured tropical bird free itself from a cage aboard a cargo ship) and the Sahara, its moments in Africa and South America are token stops in a film whose wildlife generally prefers more temperate climes.

Each species is cursorily identified along with facts and figures about its migratory habits that suggest the statistics attached to jet planes in a book about military aircraft. But the information (provided by Mr. Perrin and by occasional subtitles) is very sketchy. All you're given is a few general rules about how birds' sensitivity to temperature and the cycles of nature work to guide them like a kind of instinctive radar and how each generation learns from the one before to identify landmarks on the annual journey."




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