Kestrel's Eye
by Mikael Kristersson
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DVD details
Actor: Caisa PerssonDirector: Mikael Kristersson
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 86 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-01-20
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: FIRST RUN FEATURES
DVD Reviews of Kestrel's Eye
DVD Review: A gem
Summary: 5 Stars
This film is a gentle and visually elegant meditation that simultaneously follows the activities of a family of kestrels and their view of a lovingly cared-for cemetery below their roost. The pace is slow and the only soundtrack is the ambient sounds, but there is a spare and moving beauty to this film that makes it utterly rewarding for the patient viewer. The enormous attention that the kestrel parents bestow on their brood of chicks is mirrored by the Zen-like care with which the caretakers endlessly rake and prune the cemetery plots, bringing the patterns and rituals of both nature and humans into extraordinary focus. The way that human activity is relegated to a Lilliputian backdrop to the lives of the birds is refreshing. There are also some very amusing moments as the kestrel chicks go through their "brat pack" phase, and as a bonus, my cats got a big kick out of watching!DVD Review: For the active viewer
Summary: 5 Stars
This movie stands alone. Alone because it has boldly broken away from the patterned approach to the wild which one can reliably expect from Disney, National Geographic, Discovery, etc. Kestrel's Eye assumes an intelligent viewer who, if they are paying attention will experience something beyond the 'facts'.
This is an art film about a mating pair of Kestrel's in the belfry of a church baring witness to the life of humans! Expect transcendence...
DVD Review: The Bird's Eye View
Summary: 5 Stars
This is an absolutely extraordinary documentary, one whose profundity creeps up on you late in the first viewing. Kristersson shows us everything from the kestrels' point-of-view, camera perched high up in a Swedish church steeple, where the birds, going about their lives, observe us going about ours. Since there is no narration, no musical cues to "tell" us how to react and no English dialog - the snatches of conversation we do hear are in Swedish - and thus, in a way, we understand only shades more than (ideally)the birds might. The intercutting between the continuous-seeming on-location sounds (church music, attendants raking the stones in the graveyard, a passing parade, runners, overhead airplanes)and the bird's (seeming) reactions to these approaches genius. You begin to sense there is a tapestry here, that of lives intertwined. And you begin to wonder if the birds might not "get" more than they are ordinarily given credit for, while we are the ones who remain mostly oblivious to the wonder of them.
Because the filmmaker is showing us the textures of the lives of the birds, there are dreamily paced segments, especially as the initial mise-en-scene is established. The pace picks up when eggs are laid in a nook in the steeple wall -- making you wonder:how ever did they get a camera in there running in what looks like real time? And the film ends, abruptly as the fledgings take their maiden voyage (a few feet), which will either leave you frustrated or wanting to know more, perhaps the real purpose. Bound to become a classic, and certainly unlike any other wildlife documentary this writer has ever seen.
DVD Review: May not be for everyone
Summary: 3 Stars
This is a very barebones approach for a nature film. There is no narration or music at all, simply the footage of the kestrels and their surroundings. There isn't even an FBI warning or introduction, the footage just abruptly starts. The content is neither good nor bad, it just is. It's a little bit like watching the footage that animal behaviorists use in their studies. Sometimes it can be a little boring, but if you really want to study falcon behavior then you might enjoy it.To give you an idea of what the footage is like, it goes something like this: You see a man walking around in the church graveyard. Then you see one of the kestrels sitting on the church watching him. You go back to watching the man walk around the graveyard. A person across the street gets into their car and drives away. You see one of the kestrels sitting on the church bobbing its head. You see a few children playing in their backyard nearby. You go back to seeing one of the kestrels up on the church vocalizing. You watch a group of people jog by the church. One of the kestrels flies off and you watch him fly around and hover until he catches a mouse. You go back to seeing his mate sitting on the church. You watch the female preen. The male returns and gives the mouse to her. The female eats it. One of the kestrels vocalizes. The female walks into their nest hole. The footage suddenly cuts from winter to spring. You see and hear a human marching band go by on the street. You watch a person being buried in the graveyard below. You see the male kestrel sitting outside of the nest. You watch a man blowing leaves in the graveyard below and then listen to him talk on the phone. You see the female kestrel sitting on a wire looking around. The male kestrel vocalizes... And on and on like that.
Because the footage is so simplistic, it can move slowly sometimes. You definitely have to be in the right mood to watch it. The best part for me was watching the babies grow up. I was a little disappointed that they didn't show what happened to the babies. They didn't follow them at all after they fledged. The movie abruptly ends as soon as the babies take their first flight (which is just from the nest to a ledge a few feet away). It seems like a lot of the time that was spent early on in the movie showing nothing happening (ex: the adults sitting on a ledge looking around) could have been replaced with footage of what happened to the fledlings.
This movie is definitely not for everyone. It's not bad exactly, but a lot of people may find it boring and anti-climatic. There is no real suspense or storyline, and the way the camera never stays on any one bird for very long makes it seem a little fragmented. Overall I think this movie is best suited for someone who wants to study kestrel behavior in detail. If you're not interested in scrutinizing every second of a kestrel's movements, then you should probably buy a different nature film. If, on the other hand, you ARE interested in seeing what a kestrel does all day long in the wild, then you'll enjoy this movie.
DVD Review: A "must" for ornithology students & birdwatching enthusiasts
Summary: 5 Stars
A unique and original nature film, Kestrel's Eye is a brilliantly filmed portrait of daily life for a family of kestrels who nest in a church tower above a small Swedish town. Amazing, fascinating, "how did they do that!" angles and perspectives will fascinate the viewer throughout this one-of-a-kind, full color, 86 minute presentation. Kestrel's Eye is a "must" for ornithology students and bird watching enthusiasts!
Description of Kestrel's Eye
{First Prize, 1999 Munich Documentary Festival}{Planete Prize, 1998 Vues sur les Docs (France)}
{1998 Nordic Documentary Award, Nordic Panorama (Sweden)}
Before 'Winged Migration,' there was KESTREL'S EYE, the award-winning film that, unlike any other, plunges viewers into the world of nature, unobtrusively capturing the life of a family of kestrels (European falcons) who live in an old church tower above a small town in Sweden. Nominated for a Swedish Oscar and a multiple prize winner at documentary film festivals around the world, this feature documentary "captures reality with fidelity and intimacy that prompts old-fashioned wonder." (New York Times)
Swedish filmmaker Mikael Kristersson patiently followed the kestrels' progress for several years with special techniques and hidden cameras that gave him intimate access to their secluded nest. With vivid cinematography, and filmed from a bird's eye view, KESTREL'S EYE enters the time and space of the kestrels to show how they hunt, feed and hatch their young. With only the real sounds of the birds and their surroundings as a soundtrack, we hear how the kestrels communicate with each other as they beg for food, learn to fly, or the mother receives a juicy mouse from her beau. Letting the birds' actions speak for themselves, their lives are clearly understood and felt, in contrast to the obscure movements of the humans seen distantly in the churchyard below.
Most nature documentaries take the perspective of the intent human observer looking into the curious world of nature. The delightful Kestrel's Eye begins high in the air, looking down on the human world from a bird's eye view. Director-photographer Mikael Kristersson spent years filming a pair of handsome kestrels (European falcons) in the church tower of a small Swedish town. He captures their life of hunting, eating, grooming, mating, nesting, and raising a brood with astounding intimacy and little human intrusion. We watch the male hunt, hovering like a hummingbird before diving for a field mouse or a lizard, than take the kill to his mate. Two hidden cameras in their cave-like nest record the almost ritualistic details of nesting (a chore the male engages in, however briefly) and mothering the newly hatched chicks. There's no narration, only the chirps and clicks and fluttering wings of the birds and the ambiance of the human activity below. The amusing kestrel's-eye view of the odd activities of their human neighbors--weddings and funerals and the endless grooming of the cemetery below their nest--may be merely Kristersson's fancy but the birds seem genuinely amused by the curious spectacle. They cock an eye downward, bob and bounce to the oompah music of a passing parade, then return to their more immediate pursuit of survival. --Sean Axmaker
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