Winged Migration

There have been some great nature films and TV series on Blu-ray, such as Baraka, Planet Earth and Journey to the Edge of the World. Winged Migration is a French documentary, four years in the making, which follows different groups of birds from different areas of the planet as they make their winter journeys north to the Arctic, Antarctic or Siberia, and back to whence they came.
 
There is a narrative structure of sorts, beginning with a gaggle of geese setting off from France where a small boy frees one from some netting and is there when they return. A peasant woman tries to feed some migrating storks, but scares them away yet is there waiting for them with some seed on their homeward journey.
 

It's one of nature's great wonders how animals, birds and mammals travel huge distances for food and mating every year. I'd always assumed that birds flew south for the winter, but this shows that many choose the cold for their destination and brave the elements, hunters and pollution in a pilgrimage that is passed through generations. I don't understand why they do it, but it seems to work. The distances involved are staggering, with some flying many thousands of miles from Africa to Europe and on to the Arctic. Both hemispheres are covered, so the albatross, for example, flies south to Antarctica where the penguins have their own epic migration, brilliantly covered in March of the Penguins.
 
Director Jacques Perrin and his production team have manufactured this documentary, raising the birds from chicks so they wouldn't be afraid of the cameras and filming equipment, including microlites, boats and hot air balloons.  A couple of scenes are basically staged, so when you see a bird get stuck in industrial sludge and left behind by the flock, the 'sludge' was actually thick baby milk dyed black and the bird was washed off after they cut so it could rejoin it's friends; another purporting to show a one with a broken wing hunted and devoured by crabs was rescued by the crew and the crabs are eating a dead fish!  There were some birds which were genuinely killed and those scenes are shocking but that was part of the hunting season - it doesn't do hunting many favours and a good thing too.
 
Winged Migration is a fascinating documentary that couldn't have been made with wild birds and the crew turning up to shoot for one year.  The only way that you capture the flight patterns is by doing what they did and raising birds to do what they do naturally.  It is an incredible visual spectacle with some genuinely moving scenes and a nature film up there with the best.

The Disc

 
Extra Features
Jacques Perrin provides an interesting commentary though his thick accent and use of Franglais makes it a little hard to follow - fortunately there are subtitles in English, Spanish and Portuguese, which are a great help. The making of complements this well and is probably a better companion piece than the commentary. Running at 52 minutes it's a comprehensive look at the four-year process from raising the chicks to editing the 240 hours of footage down to 90 minutes.
 
Creating the Music has interviews with the composer and most of the musicians and is a revealing piece about a major aspect of the film. There are two filmmaker interviews: About the Film and Further Insights, which provide information about the real habits of the birds involved and more insight into the shoot.
 
The Photo Gallery with Film Maker Commentary is a slideshow of photographs of each bird with a description of varying length about that particular oiseau - more interesting than it sounds.
 
There are also trailers for Open Season 2 and Surf's Up, which I imagine are only included because they're about animals and released by SPHE.
 
The Picture
Though extraordinarily beautiful and amazingly well photographed, this isn't the best picture I've seen on a Blu-ray, with frequent noise on the wide shots; whilst this graining is only slight, it is a shame that the picture isn't of the same quality as the best nature films available in HD.
 
The film begins with a disclaimer which says that no special effects were used in the filming of the birds, so it's a little odd that there are a couple of CGI sequences to show the distance of the migration and zoom from many thousands of feet up to ground level.
 
The Sound
A terrific Dolby TrueHD soundtrack with a phenomenal score by Bruno Coulais. As there is no dialogue and only sparse narration, the music has to help tell the story and it really does have a lyrical quality, providing a them for each bird and emphasising the emotions.
 
The surrounds are frequently used but the whole system only comes to life on a couple of occasions, most notably when there is an avalanche and it seemed like my room was collapsing!
 
There are audio options in Spanish and Portuguese and a raft of subtitle options.
 
Final Thoughts
Winged Migration was an amazingly ambitious project and has resulted in a fascinating and involving documentary that looks very good in high definition.  With a great documentary, a good transfer and an excellent set of extras, fans of nature documentaries should definitely invest in this disc.