1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 14: Fly away home
Carroll Ballard has directed three fine movies about comunion between beasts and humans. The best, which everyone should see, is Never Cry Wolf (1983), in which a biologist, closely observing wolves, rediscovers his sense of childlike wonderment. The other two movies have children as protagonists. In The Black Stallion (1979), a boy and a horse are shipwrecked together on a tropical island; after they’re rescued, the boy becomes the horse’s racing jockey. And in Fly Away Home (1996), a girl (Anna Paquin) becomes a foster mother to some young geese.
This girl, a New Zealander, has just lost her mother and been brought to live with her father in his cluttered Ontario farmhouse. She isn’t very enthused about her father or her new school, but she enjoys the woods and fields. Her explorations give the camera a reason to linger over rural beauty.
Her father (Jeff Daniels) is a live-action version of a Hayao Miyazaki cartoon character. That is to say, he is an eccentric inventor, sculptor, and aeronaut. Flight is the theme of his creations. They include a gigantic metal dragon, a full-scale replica of the lunar landing module, and various leg-powered or motorized flying contraptions that he tests himself. He flies them well enough, but his landings are painful.
The inventor and his friends are full of sympathy for the girl, who is obviously lonely and frustrated (she wears her dead mother’s clothes around the house). But they are unable to earn her trust until another tragedy brings them under a common cause.
Some developers bulldoze a nearby woodland. Exploring the wreckage, the girl finds some abandoned goose eggs. She sneaks the eggs into a barn, incubates them, and watches the goslings hatch. Since she is the first creature they see, they regard her as their mother. They eat and bathe with her and follow her through the weeds and creeks and forests.
Only a broad-minded man would agree to have his house taken over by geese. The girl’s father doesn’t hesitate. By allowing his daughter to care for the geese, he helps her to come to terms with her mother’s death.
Eventually, however, it becomes clear that the geese must travel southward. It’s their instict; also, there are bureaucrats who’d destroy their habitat or even clip their wings. But without a mother to guide them, they’d never be able to find their way home.
And so the girl and her father decide to ride their aircraft to the south, over lakes and fields and skyscrapers, directing the geese in their migration.
Though all of this is fairly predictable, the movie isn’t on autopilot. Individual scenes play out in interesting ways, and certain passages evoke this biblical verse:
There’s poignancy, also, in the father’s love for his daughter, and in the daughter’s engagement with the memory of her mother through her mothering of the geese. Best of all, though, is the lovely nature photography. The movie often feels like a nature documentary. It’s a bonus that an interesting human drama is happening in the background.
This girl, a New Zealander, has just lost her mother and been brought to live with her father in his cluttered Ontario farmhouse. She isn’t very enthused about her father or her new school, but she enjoys the woods and fields. Her explorations give the camera a reason to linger over rural beauty.
Her father (Jeff Daniels) is a live-action version of a Hayao Miyazaki cartoon character. That is to say, he is an eccentric inventor, sculptor, and aeronaut. Flight is the theme of his creations. They include a gigantic metal dragon, a full-scale replica of the lunar landing module, and various leg-powered or motorized flying contraptions that he tests himself. He flies them well enough, but his landings are painful.
The inventor and his friends are full of sympathy for the girl, who is obviously lonely and frustrated (she wears her dead mother’s clothes around the house). But they are unable to earn her trust until another tragedy brings them under a common cause.
Some developers bulldoze a nearby woodland. Exploring the wreckage, the girl finds some abandoned goose eggs. She sneaks the eggs into a barn, incubates them, and watches the goslings hatch. Since she is the first creature they see, they regard her as their mother. They eat and bathe with her and follow her through the weeds and creeks and forests.
Only a broad-minded man would agree to have his house taken over by geese. The girl’s father doesn’t hesitate. By allowing his daughter to care for the geese, he helps her to come to terms with her mother’s death.
Eventually, however, it becomes clear that the geese must travel southward. It’s their instict; also, there are bureaucrats who’d destroy their habitat or even clip their wings. But without a mother to guide them, they’d never be able to find their way home.
And so the girl and her father decide to ride their aircraft to the south, over lakes and fields and skyscrapers, directing the geese in their migration.
Though all of this is fairly predictable, the movie isn’t on autopilot. Individual scenes play out in interesting ways, and certain passages evoke this biblical verse:
How think you? if a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, does he not leave the ninety and nine, and go into the mountains, and seek that which is gone astray?(Substitute “geese” for “sheep.”)
There’s poignancy, also, in the father’s love for his daughter, and in the daughter’s engagement with the memory of her mother through her mothering of the geese. Best of all, though, is the lovely nature photography. The movie often feels like a nature documentary. It’s a bonus that an interesting human drama is happening in the background.