Flying... Leaving the ground, overcoming gravity and soaring high in the sky... For man, this seems like such a dream, a gift only bestowed to birds, lucky fools. In "Le Peuple Migrateur" ("Travelling birds"), Jacques Perin's extraordinary new documentary, we see that the winged ones don't have it so easy. While we do feel awe watching them fly over sea and land, we realise that this is less a gift than a burden, an evolutionary necessity for them to survive. Directing a team of hundreds of cameramen and pilots, Perrin has assembled a travelogue of epic proportions, following all kinds of birds across the whole word as they migrate in their eternal quest for food.


There are no words to describe the poetic beauty of this film. I love how Perrin lets us get lost in the variety of landscapes and birds, having a narrator come in to give some insights only half a dozen times. The rest of the time, we're left with the sound and song of the birds and trippy music by Bruno Coulais using the voices of Nick Cave, Robert Wyatt and a choir of Bulgarian children. And so we watch everything from grandiose flying formations filling the horizon to the peculiar details of some beaks and feathers.


One might fear that watching farking birds for 100 minutes would get tiresome, but the movie manages to constantly bring in new marvels, be it how the Fous de Bassan dive in the ocean, how pelicans swallow fishes whole or the way storks do the cute little dances. Then there's the utterly great distances these feathered little dudes cover, from the snowy peaks of the Himalaya to the Great Wall of China, from Alaska to the Grand Canyon, from Scandinavian countries to the Sahara desert, from the South Pole to the Amazonian rain forest, from Paris to the New York with the Twin Towers still presiding over its skyline... The movie has us taking a trip around the world, always with the unique perspective of a bird in flight.


There's a political undercurrent to "Le Peuple Migrateur", too, as it subtly but effectively makes a case for environmentalism. While there are plenty of dangers on the road, from stormy weather to predators or plain exhaustion, there's something particularly disgusting about seeing these brave travellers be shot down by hunters or suffer through industrial pollution. And when you think of how so many species go extinct every year, this movie becomes even more valuable, as it is an important reminder that we humans aren't living alone on this planet.

6/20/2002