'Winged Migration' is beautiful, immense and ultimately... disappointing.
As a British viewer I may have been previously spoilt by the work of the BBC's Natural History Unit which uses similarly mesmirising visuals to far better affect because we learn something about the subjects. The minimal narration of this film teaches us nothing of the birds, so after the first half hour of soaring geese and gannets diving to the harmonic tones celtic/Gothic choirs, it began to get rather boring, and I say this a bird enthusiast. The stunning visuals might take your breath away and make you marvel at the truly amazing journeys the birds annually undertake, but how much more impressive the birds might have seemed if there was a narration informing of the distances involved, or that birds perhaps born only eight weeks earlier manage to complete them.
If on the other hand you want to switch your brain off, and relax to pretty pictures for an hour and a half, this is your movie. It's like muzak. It's an alternative to taking a herbal bath.
So far as parents are concerned, unless you're personally capable of providing your children with information about the birds, they'll get just as bored as I did.
Finally the staged scenes, primarily the frequent use of imprinted birds, which might not be obvious to most viewers, raises questions about how far wildlife documentary filmmakers should go in their portrayal of the truth. If you initially understand that the flight sequences are being filmed from a microlight the birds have been specially bred and trained to follow, it gets rather annoying after the first couple of scenes to see yet another wild species coerced that way by the filmmakers.
The truth in this film, much like the birds, is manipulated to produce a superficial and oblivious illustration of what are remarkable creatures.
Try David Attenborough's, The Life of Birds, instead. All the beauty and explanations too.
As a British viewer I may have been previously spoilt by the work of the BBC's Natural History Unit which uses similarly mesmirising visuals to far better affect because we learn something about the subjects. The minimal narration of this film teaches us nothing of the birds, so after the first half hour of soaring geese and gannets diving to the harmonic tones celtic/Gothic choirs, it began to get rather boring, and I say this a bird enthusiast. The stunning visuals might take your breath away and make you marvel at the truly amazing journeys the birds annually undertake, but how much more impressive the birds might have seemed if there was a narration informing of the distances involved, or that birds perhaps born only eight weeks earlier manage to complete them.
If on the other hand you want to switch your brain off, and relax to pretty pictures for an hour and a half, this is your movie. It's like muzak. It's an alternative to taking a herbal bath.
So far as parents are concerned, unless you're personally capable of providing your children with information about the birds, they'll get just as bored as I did.
Finally the staged scenes, primarily the frequent use of imprinted birds, which might not be obvious to most viewers, raises questions about how far wildlife documentary filmmakers should go in their portrayal of the truth. If you initially understand that the flight sequences are being filmed from a microlight the birds have been specially bred and trained to follow, it gets rather annoying after the first couple of scenes to see yet another wild species coerced that way by the filmmakers.
The truth in this film, much like the birds, is manipulated to produce a superficial and oblivious illustration of what are remarkable creatures.
Try David Attenborough's, The Life of Birds, instead. All the beauty and explanations too.