Winged Migration

Year: 2001

Grade: C+

Country: France

Director: Perrin

Review

it’s not an amazing film, but it is good. the cinematography looks good, but i wish they had used better cameras or film because the images weren’t as crisp as they could have been and the color wasn’t as vibrant as i would have liked. i may be nit-picking there, but for this kind of film paying attention to the technical details is pretty damn important. they used a good combination of capuring techniques – some of the shots were from one person aircrafts that flew alongside the birds, some of the shots were from boats, or from the ground – and they did a good job of drawing the viewer into the life of the birds. the movie itself is a cross between baraka and microcosmos…it doesn’t have quite the socio/political commentary of baraka and doesn’t have as high a quality of photography as microcosmos. unlike either film, winged migration chooses to have some narration and information. this was nice, but ultimately not very informative. it gave statistics on how far a certain species of bird migrates, but didn’t go much beyond that. an overrated movie, but hopefully it’ll draw attention to films like it. certainly there were nice things about the film…one can’t watch birds for an hour and a half and not be intrigued at least a little bit, but that’s testament to the subject matter, not the film.