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BY PETER KEOUGH
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In this Oscar-nominated documentary, Jacques Perrin, producer of the stunning Microcosmos, turns his lens from the invertebrate to the avian world, studying such mysteries as how Canada geese can migrate thousands of miles from the Arctic to the Caribbean and still wind up on your local golf course. Actually, the mysteries that Perrin and co-directors Jacques Cluzaud and Michel Debats ponder are much loftier: survival of the fittest, cyclical renewal, the power of instinct and of life itself. Such philosophical digressions only distract from the real delight of the film, the stunning scenes of birds in flight, at rest, and in trouble shot on seven continents with such over-the-wing intimacy they seem like an exceptionally vivid CGI effects. Even more compelling are the intermittent vignettes that touch on tragedy: a disabled Arctic tern pursued by an army of crabs; a penguin bewailing the hapless loss of a chick to a predator; a goose that finds itself in a sticky situation in the polluted ruins of a Kosovo factory. That some of these scenarios were manipulated doesn’t diminish them as much as Perrin’s fitful and banal voiceover narration. Faults aside, Le peuple migrateur evokes the appropriate responses for a film trying to be true to nature: wonder, humility, and respect. In English and French with English subtitles. (98 minutes)
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