Travelling Birds

Released: 19/6/2003
Director: Jaques Perrin
Duration: 98 mins
Country of Origin: France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland
Movie Genre: Documentary
Classification: G

Author: Julie Rigg

Plot Outline: Documentary on the migratory patterns of birds, shot over the course of three years on all seven continents.

Do you ever have flying dreams?

I’m one of those people who don’t easily recall their dreams. Reading a novel by Meg Stewart recently brought back in a rush those regular dreams of flying. The joy of feeling of recognition as one slowly levitates.. rises up through tree branches, levels off, stretches out the arms. "Yes, I can do this, I’ve done this before."

The feeling of mounting confidence…realizing one can just change direction up down, sideways with the smallest body movement, the glee as one swoops down over the heads of the grounded, and then veers off and up. The perspective. All those earthbound figures shrinking, taking their place as part of a grand pattern of landscape. And the fabulous sensation, the rush of wind in ones ears, the dampness of cloud which thins out as you leave it behind. To dream of flying is to know absolute freedom. Travelling Birds, which opens this week, is the closest we can come to that dream.

This documentary is from the French director Jaques Perrin and his colleagues, people who made that fascinating essay on insect life, Microcosmos.

For this film, about the migration patterns of a dozen or more bird species, fourteen cinematographers and seventeen pilots went up with cameras in all kinds of craft from helicopters to hot air balloons to fragile ultra light planes to fly with the birds.

They used a technique developed first by the Canadian wildlife enthusiast Bill Lishman who, a decade ago, reared a flock of Canadian geese to think of him as their father, and then encouraged them to fly with him in an ultra light aircraft while he took them on their first migration.

So for this film, the cinematographers were raising birds, talking to them in the egg, imprinting on them when they came out, gaining their trust before they mounted the shaky dangerous ultra light aircraft whose wheels retract so there is NOTHING between the man, the camera and the bird ahead.

On film the experience is astonishing. We can feel the pull of muscle and the beat of feathered wings of the snow goose as it makes its long migration. We are surrounded at times by the bird cacophony, by the honking, fluttering and chattering. We ARE the migrating birds - almost.

While Travelling Birds is almost completely visual and aural, the minimal narration is both too reverent, and also uninformative. Why, I kept wondering as we embarked with yet another species on yet another compulsive journey of thousands of kilometers of effort, why DO these birds keep migrating? Why does a tern fly 12 and a half thousand miles – the length of the globe -to roost on some artic outcrop. Why not stay and nest where it’s warm and comfortable? I mean, could someone please explain this to me?

Nobody does. I think they might have. I think too, I could have done without the soapy Euro-pop soundtrack. Despite this, I became increasingly captivated, as breathtaking shot succeeded shot, as we fly with the birds over Amazon rainforest, glaciers in Iceland, the dunes of the Sahara, Vietnamese rice paddies, mists of the Camargue.

These birds.. the mallards, the cranes, storks, the gulls, the geese.. these are the masters of the universe, and we are the puny, earthbound dots on their landscapes.

Up high in the realm of the birds there IS danger. Storm and winds can buffet you off course, you may be injured, tire, fall behind, drop and die.

But much greater danger is on the ground, from other species. We see hermit crabs tear at a bird with a broken wing. Humans make huge oil spills which can mire birds. Or flying with migrating ducks we swoop down to a lake where a lure is calling, only to encounter hunters' guns. It’s a shock this violence. We feel completely vulnerable. This film will change your perspective and possibly your dreams.

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