Kestrel's Eye

Rarely have I enjoyed a film more than this one, though there is no one telling us what is happening. There is not silence, however, as you are treated to all the sounds of nature, including bird song and the noises of people going about their business. The Swedish landscape is spectacular, and this pair of kestrels is just beautiful to watch. I learned many things about kestrels that I did not know before, and the most astonishing for me was watching them doing their flying in place, like their tiny cousins, the hummingbirds. I have now watched Kestrel's Eye three times. And I will watch it more times yet. This photographer ties what is happening with the birds above with what is happening with the humans below in a way that makes me feel that what we are viewing is also God's view of His creation.

aok

An excellent, very interesting look at kestrels.

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!

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.

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...