PBS-y nature documentary, French-made, following avian flight routes and disabusing you, along the way, of all that free-as-a-bird baloney. Being a bird looks like killingly hard work. And getting picked out of the sky by duck hunters is an occupational hazard observed with a stoical no-comment. With its strict focus on migration, the film inevitably turns monotonous: it can switch from one species of bird to another, but it cannot build or develop; it can only spread. And it's as low on solid information as it is high on visual beauty. (And on otherworldly marvels: the Bar-Headed Goose getting out of the way of a snowy avalanche; the Clark's Grebe running on water; the Northern Gannet nosediving into the Arctic Ocean.) The nature documentary, as a genre, may prove to be the last bastion of top-grade cinematography, the final line of resistance to video, the one sanctuary where it still matters How Things Look. "No special effects," we're advised in a printed prologue, "were used in the filming of the birds." Which is remarkable in itself. But does it rule out any digital cutting-and-pasting to transplant the filmed birds from one backdrop to another? An irreversible drawback to the magic of computers is that something we would like to view with awe and wonder, we are obliged to view instead with doubt and suspicion. The wide eye of innocence has been forever narrowed. Directed by Jacques Perrin, Jacques Cluzaud, and Michel Debats. (2002) — Duncan Shepherd
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