(Reviews of Hundreds of Beavers; A House in Jerusalem; Bushman; and Heart of an Oak)
HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS.
If Guy Maddin and Dom Joly conspired to create a live-action Elmer Fudd cartoon, it might look a bit like Mike Cheslik's Hundreds of Beavers. Following Lake Michigan Monster (2018), this silent, monochrome comedy has been made over six years on a micro $150,000 budget in conjunction with actor-writer Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, who also worked on the 2016 short, L.I.P.S. Containing over 1500 effects shots, this canny blend of knockabout, pastiche, animation, and video game is destined to become a cult classic.
The plot matters less than the gags, which come thick and fast, as 19th-century applejack entrepreneur, Jean Kayak (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews), sees his distillery and surrounding orchard destroyed by fire after beavers chew through the wooden beams supporting a giant keg. Regaining consciousness in heavy snow, the heavily bearded Jean attempts to catch food to silence his rumbling stomach. But the rabbits who inhabit the woods easily see through his gauche attempts to catch them and, when he does finally succeed in snaring one, it's eaten by some raccoons who have been enjoying his hapless efforts from an overhanging tree branch.
Forever falling into snow holes made by the rabbits as part of a network of escape tunnels, Jean decides to try angling. However, the fish ignore his lures until he accidentally cuts his finger and reels in a bumper catch. Stumbling across a store in the wilderness, Jean trades some of the fish with The Merchant (Doug Mancheski), who sells him a tiny penknife from the selection of hunting equipment he keeps. Catching sight of The Merchant's Furrier Daughter (Olivia Graves), Jean decides to become a trapper, although his initial efforts leave much to be desired after he cuts up his clothing to make snares.
A Native American Fur Trapper (Luis Rico) agrees to swap the knife for a pair of snow shoes and Jean succeeds in capturing a raccoon and gazes on with goo-goo eyes, as the Merchant's Furrier Daughter disembowels the creature with practised skill and makes him an outfit, complete with a hat made from the animal's head.
Recovering from a broken leg after falling into a pit dug by The Master Fur Trapper (Wes Tank), Jean tags along to pick up tips. However, the Master Fur Trapper's sled dogs start disappearing during the night and Jean is left with a diagram showing the location of his traps when his companion is devoured by wolves. Still a novice, Jean relies on his own cockamamie hunting methods. But they prove successful and the Merchant's Furrier Daughter gives Jean a pole dance while her father is distracted. Suitably enlusted, Jean vows to capture enough pelts to purchase an engagement ring. However, The Merchant informs him that he would need to capture hundreds of beavers in order to make the payment.
Discovering that the wolves have hidden The Master Fur Trapper's haul in their cave, Jean attempts to steal them. His repeated failures are viewed by beavers bearing a resemblance to Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, who report back to the vast dam that the beavers are constructing on the nearby lake. A bid to stop Jean's activities backfires when he coaxes a recce party into the wolf cave and he uses icicles to create a gate to prevent the beavers from escaping. When he brings the furs to the store, however, he discovers it's merely a wooden flat erected by the beavers to recover the pelts and give them a decent burial.
Breaking into the dam to reclaim his booty, Jean navigates the intricate machinery to track down his prey. However, he is caught in the act and put on trial before a beaver court. He is found guilty and laid out on a buzz saw table so that a coat can be made of his skin. But he manages to escape and not only beats up lots of beavers, but also sabotages a rocket that has been built out of his surviving applejack keg and creates Green Bay by destroying the dam.
Rolling the pelts into a large snowball, Jean strikes out for the store. The beavers form a colossal human figure that strides after their foe, only for the Native American Fur Trapper to help his friend by roping the rocket and forcing it to plough into the beaver behemoth, which adds to the haul that Jean presents to The Merchant, who consents to the betrothal, as the body count rises into the 380s.
Opening with a rousing production number worthy of Trey Parker's Cannibal! The Musical (1993) and alternating inspired gags with cornball buffoonery, this bravura delight is guaranteed to generate belly laughs and wry smiles aplenty, as well as fitful groans at the odd clunker that falls resoundingly flat. Such is the scattershot nature of the comedy, as the gags relentlessly tumble in on each other, that Cheslik and Tews even get away with a running joke about the baccy-chewing Merchant repeatedly missing a spittoon.
The pair have shared their influences in a 92-strong list of comic classics on Letterboxed. But Georges Méliès, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chapin, and Karel Zeman are the names that leap most readily to mind, as this wilderness romp morphs into a live-action exercise in product placement for the Acme corporation from the Looney Tune cartoons. One suspects much of the credit for such shtick is owed to Mike Wesolowski, whose `gag man' credit will warm the cockles of anyone with a love for silent slapstick.
But sound plays a crucial role in the humour, whether it's the human and animal chatter that designer Bobb Barito mixes into a soundtrack that is replete with moments of foley magic and the library selections supplementing Chris Ryan's score, such as `Left Bank Two' by The Noveltones, which those of a certain age will recognise as the gallery music for wonderful BBC children's art show, Vision On (1964-76). Equally important are the puppets devised and operated by Brandon Kirkham, the splendid outsize animal costumes designed by Casey Harris and worn with such aplomb by an unseen cast of comic performers. The impeccable miniatures and ludicrous props are also a joy, as are the visual effects concocted on a home computer in post-production by Cheslik after he and cinematographer Quinn Hester had shot the action in front of tarpaulins suspended in the Wisconsin woods in the middle of winter.
Such primitive conditions make the performances all the more laudable. But Tews stands out for both the cartoonishness of the faces he pulls in close-up and the agility of his physical clowning. Mack Sennett and Hal Roach would have nodded in approval, as would the makers of Super Mario Bros and Donkey Kong. But for all its crackpot plotting and gonzo energy, this is clearly a work of considerable intelligence and ingenuity, whose meticulous planning is artfully masked by the DIY aesthetic and madcap antics.
A HOUSE IN JERUSALEM.
Having made his name with Love, Theft and Other Entanglements (2015) and The Reports on Sarah and Saleem (2018), Palestinian film-maker Muayad Alayan attempts a supernatural allegory in A House in Jerusalem. Co-written by Alayan's US-based brother, Rami, this co-production harbours the best of intentions. But the implementation is less sure-footed.
Heartbroken by the car crash death of her mother, Rachel (Rebecca Calder), 10 year-old Rebecca Shapiro (Miley Locke) leaves Britain and moves into the house that dad Michael (Johnny Harris) has just inherited from his own father. Meaning well, but lacking empathy, Michael ticks Rebecca off when she lays a place for Rachel at dinner and when she opens the trapdoor covering an old well in the garden. When a mirror breaks in the night after Rebecca has fished an old-fashioned doll out of the water, he throws it away and she is puzzled by the wet footprints on the stone floor.
Left alone when Michael goes to work, Rebecca hears noises around the house and he rushes back with a cop when she calls. But there's no one to be seen and nothing is missing. Shortly afterwards, Michael is so dismayed when a drawing of a girl appears on a downstairs wall and Rebecca claims she can see someone scurrying across the garden that he insists she visits a therapist. She prescribes pills, but Rebecca keeps having nightmares about the crash.
Walking alone through the neighbourhood, Rebecca is discomfited by the looks she receives, but says nothing to Michael, who is preoccupied with his work. That night, she opens to trapdoor over the well and Rasha (Sheherazade Makhoul Farrell) climbs out and demands her doll. It had been made by her mother, but she hasn't seen her since the day the family was driven out of the house by men with guns, while she hid in the well until they left. Rebecca doesn't quite understand, especially when Rasha asks why her things are no longer in her bedroom. But she is relieved that Michael can't see Rasha, as it means she doesn't have to try and explain her presence.
Rebecca watches Rasha mooching around the kitchen over supper and learns that her grandfather bought the house from the state in the 1960s. She wonders whether Rasha is dead, but she doesn't think so. However, she is too afraid to leave the grounds, even after Rebecca learns from a puppeteer in an old part of the city (on a walk with her summer camp group) that an old woman in Bethlehem still makes dolls like the one Rasha is missing so badly.
When Michael has friends over, Rasha smashes a vase in frustration at hearing that his father had sold the furniture that had been left in house when the Mansour family was driven away in 1948. She also finds the dress belonging to Rachel that Michael had hidden in the shed to stop Rebecca from clinging to the past. However, she is keen to get to Bethlehem (even though Michael says it's not safe) because she is certain that Rasha's parents are in a camp for displaced persons.
In seeking out information, Rebecca visits websites that bring a cop (Riyad Sliman) to the house to check out that she is not in contact with subversive groups. Naturally, Michael is aghast and locks the well and gives Rebecca another pill. Thinking she's out for the night (when she's not been swallowing the medication), he invites Nurit (Mouna Hawa) round for some red wine and smooching. Having found a tunnel under the house from the shed that allows her to snoop, Rebecca throws up at her father's betrayal before taking a handy bus to Bethlehem and passing through a checkpoint into the West Bank as a part of a singing Christian group who don't have to show any ID.
A helpful boy (who supports Liverpool) shows her to the Mansour house, where an old woman (Souad Faress) spends her days making dolls. Rebecca asks if she can buy one and threads a needle so at her initial can be stitched into the costume. Spotting a picture of her house on the wall, Rebecca begs who she takes to be Rasha's mother to come and collect her. However, she whisked away by a police unit that pinpoints her location in a matter of minutes after Michael realises she's gone and a diver has established she's not at the bottom of the well.
Furious with her father, Rebecca is sedated, as her therapist, Nurit, and old family friend Shlomi (Makram Khoury) look on. She wakes to find he has hired a sitter to care for her while he goes out. Distraught that she has let Rasha down, Rebecca drugs the sitter with her sleeping pills and finds a hammer so she can break the concrete lip of the well. Slipping through a crack, she climbs down the ladder, but loses her footing and falls into the water.
Suddenly, Rachel materialises to sweep her up and whisper that it's time to let go, as she takes her to the surface. Rebecca calls for help and is heard by Rasha, who has been found by a penitent Michael and smuggled through a checkpoint to revisit her old home. Michael burrows through the hole to save his daughter and she is pulled to out by young Rasha. They embrace, as Rebecca tries to explain that she has found her mother. But, when she looks up, it's old Rasha she sees and realises that she is her friend as an old lady. Just as Rasha is explaining about what happened to Palestinians in 1948, the cop comes to take her away because she's not allowed to be here and the Shapiros could get into trouble if she stays.
Rasha takes a branch from a tree and is driven away, leaving her younger self looking mournfully on. As Rasha has brought the doll Rebecca had chosen, she slips it through the crack into the well so that her spectral friend won't have to be alone waiting for the parents who will never come. Rebecca's mind drifts back to the crash and how she had tried to revive her mother before running to the road to fetch help. A car stops and Michael and his daughter emerge to lay flowers at the tree Rachel had hit. With blood trickling down her face, Rebecca turns to the camera and stares.
Despite the poignant ending and the Green Knowe undertones, this gentle Nakba ghost story struggles to overcome the weight of the enormous contrivance that sets the story in motion. Even though he is grieving, Michael makes no mention of a personal connection to Israel or having ever previously lived in Jerusalem or even having visited it. So, why would he uproot everything in Britain to live in a house left by a father he didn't seem to have liked in a place he clearly doesn't know or understand?
Not content with making him a plot pawn, the Alayans also make Michael a dreadful father, who is so lacking in empathy that he feels as though he has been dredged up from a Victorian penny dreadful. Moreover, he's a workaholic (in a chic creative job that he conveniently manages to land without any bother), who seems unconcerned at leaving a vulnerable 10 year-old alone in a place where she knows no one and doesn't speak the language. In fact, Michael doesn't appear to have any Hebrew, either, as he even calls out to the binmen in English. It doesn't help the character's credibility that he's so woodenly played by Johnny Harris, who is usually such a dependable performer, albeit with significantly better scripts.
Fortunately, the excellent Miley Locke is on hand to carry the rickety scenario with help from the equally impressive Sheherazade Makhoul Farrell, whose air of puzzled sadness balances Locke's precocious defiance. Muayad Alayan deserves credit for his deft direction of his young stars, who discuss complex issues like bereavement, loss, memory, and injustice with a charming blend of innocent ignorance and intuitive morality. Souad Faress also makes a valuable contribution as the stoic survivor, even though the `rescue' sequence is so clumsily staged and edited as to be almost risible.
On the technical side, cinematographer Sebastian Boch makes evocative use of the Jerusalem landmarks that Rebecca sees on her group walks and during her bus ride, while Bashar Hassuneh's production design suggests the grandeur of the property in what is called `the Valley of the Ghosts', while also dotting it with passageways to enhance the sense of adventure that might appeal to tweenage audiences. Unfortunately, Alex Simu's score is less subtle, as it frequently provides over-emphatic accompaniment when the piano piece over the closing credits attests that he is capable of greater nuance. The same is true of the director, whose plea for remembrance and tolerance has a sincerity that ripples throughout a fitful story that is nevertheless well worth telling. But what lingers longest is the quietly reproachful contrast between West Jerusalem and the West Bank (divided by an unpersuasively porous border), which is summed up by the older Rasha's sorrowful lament, `The past hurts my heart.'
BUSHMAN.
Born to Alsatian migrant parents in Ames, Iowa, director David Schickele met Paul Eyam Nzie Okpokam when he was in Nigeria with the Peace Corps. They collaborated on Give Me a Riddle (1966), a vérité documentary that could almost be seen as a prologue to Bushman (1971), a drama with a unique twist that has been restored after long being neglected and is now being shown in a few selected UK cinemas for the first time.
A caption reads: `1968 Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, [teenage Black Panther] Bobby Hutton are among the recent dead. In Nigeria the Civil War is entering its second year with no end in sight.' As Gabriel (Paul Eyam Nzie Okpokam) shuffles along a dusty road with his sneakers on his head, we hear Igbo chanting and the scene cuts briefly to a girl and her younger brother walk along carrying yams on their heads. A motor-tricyclist (Mike Slye) stops to give Gabriel a lift in his rickshaw trailer and does a wheelie to show off. He learns that Gabiel is teaching in San Francisco and asks him to say something in African. The response translates as, `A traveller is like a ghost, he keeps going, crosses the rivers, passes through darkness, flies with the birds, until he comes to a land where nobody knows him.'
In voiceover, Gabriel describes a festival in his village, when there is plentiful food and he gets home late after drumming all day for people to dance. Anthropological footage accompanies his description, which is crosscut with him calling on Alma (Elaine Featherstone) so they can hang out. She asks about a letter from home because war is raging in Nigeria and he tells her about being pulled over by a cop, who let him go because he told him he was an African chief. They wander around the neighbourhood, with Gabriel teasing Alma by singing snatches of `We Shall Overcome'.
Finding an empty bar, Gabriel tells Alma about some of the things that were forbidden in the bush, such as venturing into the `bad bush', where the bodies of dead chiefs were left to rot until their heads fell off. Amused by the photos around the bar of what are essentially white people apart from the colour of their skin, Gabriel muses on what to do with his life. He has a BA, but not sure what good it does him and he has no great desire to go home.
Home for Alma is the Watts district and she jokes about the girlfriend of the local drug dealer preening in the front seat of his big white car in a fur coat, even though it's swelteringly hot. She regrets that so many of the clever people she had known at school are now in prison for speaking their minds, while the others have got three or four kids they don't really want.
While Alma dances barefoot to Aretha Franklin's `Respect' on the jukebox, Gabriel writes `Love Would Help Me' in Igbo above the urinal in the washroom. She chases after Gabriel when he leaves suddenly and they go to her place, where her brother (Lothario Lotho) and his friend (James Earl Garrison) are hanging. They ask about the war with Biafra and he tries to explain about tribal rivalry, but winds up playing keepy-uppy with a ball on the roof. Alma climbs the ladder to bid farewell before loading her stuff into her brother's car and driving back to Watts to get her head together and be of service to her community.
Talking to camera, Gabriel recalls how he was drawn into Catholicism, even though he was puzzled about why it was a sin to look at bare breasts when he saw them so often. He jokes that a priest had said he was going to Hell, when he went to confession at the end of a retreat and admitted to fornicating a thousand times. Intercut with this are shots of Gabriel finding a log on a beach and getting chatting to a white girl (Ann Scofield) in a café. They go to a bar and he tells her that his favourite delicacy is babies arms in a pot. She is a McLuhan-fixated sociology student and feels deep guilt about what `my people have done to your people', but a Black waitress (Shermane Powell) isn't impressed by their canoodling and slams their drinks on the table. They sleep together, but Gabriel leaves when she wakes and starts giving him a hard time.
Speaking to camera, Gabriel enthuses about the books he read as a boy that sparked his desire to travel. He muses about Oliver Twist and Louis XIV and how he dreamt so often of adventures that he decided to become a sailor. As he cooks for himself in his flat after looking through want ads in the paper, Gabriel pays a visit to Felix (Jack Nance), a wealthy gay man who is taken by his imposing beauty. He asks him to break new life into a phallic carving, but Gabriel has already confided to the camera that he was made wary of men making advances when a priest had asked him to call round after a service. Felix begs for a hug and Gabriel consents, but quickly backs away and beats a retreat.
Chipping away at the log, Gabriel tells Mark (David Schickele) that he used to feel he was wearing a magical coat that protected him because whenever the cops stopped him they recognised he was a foreigner. But he feels his luck may be running out and that he needs to get away. Talking to the camera, he recalls getting into fights back home and driving his father to distraction. However, his plans to cross into Ghana and join a band came to nothing when he fell ill and he ended up finishing school with good qualifications.
Needing to get out of the city, Gabriel goes camping in the mountains with Mark and Susie (Timothy Near). He encounters snow and enjoys sliding down a slope and having the freedom to shout, sing, and do as he pleases. Driving back to San Francisco, he dozes on her shoulder, but she gets home to questions from her jealous boyfriend, Marty (Patrick Gleeson), about what had gone on between them.
Gabriel lounges around in bed with Susie, who is intrigued by his hair. He jokes about American plastic combs being too feeble to cope with his hair, while we hear part of his interview about his college days in Nigeria and how he had got into trouble during an election campaign for criticising the government's handling of independence in 1960. Smiling, he claims that his mother had warned him about watching what he said, but he felt he would be okay in the land of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln.
We see him meeting with a friend (David Major) who is posing with a gun at a car scrapyard. Susie dumps Marty to be with Gabriel and she sits on the edge of the bath watching him wash. She writes her name on his back in cream before rubbing it into his skin. On an excursion, she calls him a Black Marlow disappearing into a heart of darkness and he shouts `the horror, the horror' into an echoing pipe before declaring a hankering for a hamburger.
Suddenly, the screen goes dark and the fictional part of the film ends. Seemingly, the police arrested Okpokam on a terrorist charge and deported him - which is precisely what was to have happened to Gabriel in the film. Curtis Branch describes how, during a strike led by the Black Students Union and the Third World Liberation Front, Okpokam was framed by the cops for carrying a homemade bomb on the campus at San Francisco State College, where he was teaching African history and working on his masters degree. He was bundled into the back of a car and only an officer's concern for his upholstery prevented his colleagues from detonating the device on the seat beside Okpokam. Instead, they exploded it on the roof and he became too scared to leave the house after he was bailed.
Twenty days later, he was arrested again as a suspect in an armed robbery. This charge was dropped, but he was jailed to prevent him breaching his bail conditions by adhering to an immigration order to leave the United States within 10 days. When the district attorney offered to deport him immediately if he pleaded guilty to the robbery charge, Okpokam declared he would rather rot in jail. As a consequence, he was tried and found guilty of the bomb charge and sentenced to two-five years in prison.
John Dotson recalls befriending him in prison while cadging cigarettes. Okpokam would spend a year behind bars before he was finally given a suit and 15 minutes to say his goodbyes at the airport. Margo Davis took the photos that Schickele includes in boldly using the travesty his friend had endured to end his film. Yet, despite being acclaimed by the critics, Bushman was barely seen and is only now being hailed as a landmark in American indie realism. Half a century later, it still holds up a mirror to a society that has the effrontery to consider itself the Land of the Free.
For all its satirical potency, unconventional artistry, and subversive daring, it's more a discovery than a classic. But it's endlessly fascinating, both in terms of the provocative content and Schickele's technique, which owes much to David Myers's inquisitive monochrome photography. Few American directors were so overtly displaying the influence of the nouvelle vague in 1968 or broaching political, cultural, and sexual themes that would have sent shudders through the Production Code Office. But the impact of this freewheeling saga (which was co-funded by the American Film Institute) would have been significantly reduced without Okpokam's charisma, articulacy, and composure, whether relating anecdotes to camera or improvising with his co-stars.
Okpokam taught and wrote plays back in Nigeria, dying at the age of 78 in 2018. A musician who also acted in two films by Rob Nilsson and seven by Bobby Roth, Schickele predeceased him at 62 in 1999. All credit should go to the Other Parties Film Company for securing this notable treatise on living between two worlds, although it's frustrating that Give Me a Riddle remains out of reach. Perhaps someone can rectify the situation with a DVD release.
HEART OF AN OAK.
A tree planted in Solange in Central France in 1810 is the star of Laurent Charbonnier and Michel Seydoux's Heart of an Oak. Napoleon Bonaparte was Emperor of the French when its first shoots appeared and state-of-the art animation allows us to see how the 210 year-old roots have spread in the interim. For the most part, however, this is not an exclusively arboreal profile, as the trunk and branches act as host to various creatures. Similarly, the `year in a life' chronicle is more of a son et lumière presentation than a documentary per se, as the film-makers can't resist shaping the commentary-free visuals to create little wildlife melodramas that recall those True-Life Adventures that Walt Disney liked to pass off as educational films in the 1950s.
Things start sedately, with insects scurrying, birds preening, a red squirrel bounded, and a wood mouse nipping to the nearby stream for a drink. But grey clouds gather over our pedunculate oak and a rainstorm sends creatures darting for cover. A ladybird clings on to a stalk, as the wood mouse skedaddles along shallow passageways to ensure that its family is safe from the rising waters seeping through the bark.
Sunshine returns, waters recede, and a raindrop breaks over an insect beneath a leaf. The squirrel comes out to sniff the foliage, as feathers and paws are cleaned. A coypu takes a dip among some wading birds, as the afternoon wears on and dusk brings a boar to the tree for a good scratch. By moonlight, a barn owl seems to keep an eye on a hedgehog and a scuttling wood mouse, who just makes it back to the safety of the trunk, as a fox comes lumbering through the undergrowth.
A pair of acorn weevils mate to Dean Martin's `Sway', with the squirrel popping out to survey the scene, as the poor male appears to plummet to the ground after doing his stuff. Just as suddenly, the leaves change colour and drift on the stiffening wind, as autumn comes. Boars and roe deer seem to listen as acorns bounce off branches and land on the ground. The squirrel comes bounding down to grab what he can and bury it under moss for later. But a pair of Eurasian jays squabble over the hollowed acorns containing weevil larvae and the other creatures appear to give them a wide berth, as they peck and squawk.
As night falls after a grub pushes out of its acorn and burrows into the ground for safety, the owl peruses the wood mice, as they follow the rootling boars digging up carefully secreted acorns. Grabbing and gobbling, they scuttle across the forest floor, ducking and diving to avoid predators before breathing heavily once back inside the tree.
As leaves float down, geese take flight and a drone shot over the woodland canopy approximates their perspective. Lesley Garrett sings Handel's aria, `Lascia ch'io pianga', as winter sets in. A sprinkling of snow makes the red squirrel highly visible, as he scoots in search of buried treasure, while sheltering birds watch the deer and boar foraging for food. A sentinel mouse stands guard as others sleep, while the acorn weevils silently take shape in the dank darkness.
Geese landing on the lake signals the arrival of spring and the squirrel is quickly out to scale the branches. A pair of mice squabble over an acorn, while a goshawk stalks an unsuspecting jay. The sound of wings alerts the smaller bird, however, and a furious chase ensues between the avenues of trees. Diving down, the jay nestles in some brush and the hawk admits defeat. Hopping back to the surface, the jay glides home and is greeted on an oak branch with nuzzling relief by its companion.
A song contest breaks out among the birds building nests, with one jay pecking at the industrious ants that have strayed on to its plumage. Baby tree mice peer myopically from their nest, as the weevils begin to rouse themselves. As the score swells, the birdsong turns into warning calls, as a snake slithers up the trunk in search of easy pickings. The squirrel joins in the surveillance, but it's the birds who rally to the cause and dip down to try and scare the predator away. Their efforts seem in vain, until the branch snaps and the snake plummets into the lake and sidles away.
Avoiding the darting tongue of a toad, a weevil makes the perilous journey from its sanctuary to the oak. Insect activity is rife, as it climbs upwards towards its new home. Meanwhile, the squirrel scampers in the shade before a boar snort sends it bounding back up the trunk. Dusk descends and clouds drift across a pale moon under the watchful gaze of the owl.
Next morning, however, Keith Lockhart's rendition of Glenn Miller's `In the Mood' accompanies a montage of fledglings leaving the nest and attempting their maiden flights; striped boar piglets playfully barge into each other; parent mice carry young ones by the scruffs of their neck to ensure they go where they're told; ducks give swimming lessons to their broods; and the red squirrel dashes about as is his wont. He keeps a close eye on a wood mouse scutteting to the water's edge for a drink, as birds chunter at each other on branches before taking wing. Insects beetle over the bark, as we head below ground for the final time to show how the roots of the grand old English oak are connected to a sapling that has sprung up nearby, thanks, no doubt to some sciurine horticulture.
As Tim Dup's `Et tu restes' plays on the soundtrack, a series of captions in French and Latin identifies the creatures we have been watching (with English subtitles, of course). These might have been more useful during the film itself, but they would probably have distracted from the exquisite widescreen visuals achieved by Mathieu Giombini and his team. The badgers, greater spotted woodpeckers, and blue tits may only be bit players, but they merit a mention - unlike the bees, ladybirds, beetles, grasshoppers, ants, and other insects who are very much part of the tree scene. Such an omission rather confirms that the purpose of this self-professed `adventure movie' is to entertain rather than inform. Why else would editor Sylvie Lager pay so much attention to eyeline matches to suggest that the woodland inhabitants are participating in mutually inclusive dramas rather than simply getting on with the all-encompassing daily business of survival?
While it might fall short on the Attenborough scale, this still proves highly enjoyable, with the furry critters stealing the show from the jays and the weevils. As a consequence, it would be churlish to scold Charbonnier and Seydoux for fabricating Flahertyian narratives when so many natural history films do the same. And they do it rather well, even though the choice of the songs that supplement Cyrille Aufort's melodic score are sometimes a little crass. They also know their stuff when it comes to camera placement, as the remarkable goshawk sequence shows. Well worth programming with Claude Nuridsany and Marie Pérennou's Microcosmos (1996), this might even be amusingly twinned with Christopher Morris's A Year in a Field.
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