The Paper's reporter Qian Chengxi
For nature-loving audiences, the name of the recently deceased French director Jacques Perrin is thunderous. "Bird Migration", "Himalayas", "Ocean"... These works are monumental works in the history of nature documentaries, and also establish Jacques Perrin's position as a director of nature documentaries.
Jacques Behan did not have a background in natural sciences, and because of his high talent, he became an actor after graduating from high school, and in 1966 he won the Golden Lion Award for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival, making him one of the youngest film emperors in the history of cinema. However, from 1989 as a producer for Monkey Clan, Behan plunged into the world of nature documentaries until 2016's Four Seasons, in which he produced and filmed seven nature documentaries in more than 20 years.
Jacques Behan in the filming of Migrating Birds
Behan once told the media that making nature documentaries was his childhood dream. It's not that he's been intimate with nature since he was a kid, on the contrary, he's been to boarding school since he was a kid, the doors are locked, and he's always thinking about how to cross the gates and walls. For him, nature was dreamlike to him, and it was the enclosed environment that inspired his desire for these dreams. "What I love is the experience of flying in the sky with birds and swimming in the water with fish, and it's all worth it, it's worth it."
Part of the reason for "Migrating Birds" came from a documentary he had seen about an Englishman and a Canadian flying with a Canada goose. "The reason I like this documentary is that it's not preachy. I realized that I wanted to follow different kinds of birds around the world and remind us that we are not alone on this planet, that we share land with other creatures, and that they have a right to live. ”
One of the characteristics of Behan's nature documentaries that distinguishes them from others is that there is almost no narration and the vocals are limited to the most basic introductions. For example, in "Migrating Birds", the audience will hear the flapping of the wings of the birds around them, and the sand dunes and snow peaks flow under the wings.
Migrating Birds offers an unprecedented perspective
"I don't like narration," Behan said in an interview, "I don't like commentary at all." If you're at a classical music concert and you close your eyes, you're dreaming. The same goes for this movie, except that the eyes are open. With an explanation, it is no longer mysterious, just like love, no longer a mystery. ”
The filming of "Migrating Birds" took five photographic groups to travel to 40 countries from the Amazon River valley to the Arctic. It was the end of the 1990s, aerial photography drones had not yet been born, how to track birds? Behan used innovative means, he used gliders, remote-controlled gliders, helicopters, delta gliders... And other various aircraft, but also installed a video camera on the balloon. At the same time, he recruited more than 100 biology graduate students to breed the birds that appear in the film to build a sense of familiarity. When they begin to migrate, they can accept these "adoptive parents" flying side by side with these aircraft and birds.
The scene where the photographer and the birds fly together is also a dream in itself
Through these methods, we were able to re-see the world from the perspective of migrating birds, and learn what it was like to travel thousands of miles north when spring was warm and cold, or fly south in the cold winds of autumn. When African white pelicans, giant swans, and snow geese fly over the countryside, you're so close to them that you can see how small streams of air blow the feathers on their wings. It's not hard to imagine what kind of visual spectacle this documentary, released in 2001, has brought to audiences in the new millennium.
Behan's dedication to quality did not make his work very fast, and after "Migrating Birds", it was not until 2009 that "Ocean" came out, which took five years, cost 50 million euros, used 12 film crews, 70 ships, more than 100 species were filmed in 50 film locations around the world, and more than 500 hours of underwater world and ocean-related material, which became the largest documentary in history.
Stills from Ocean
"Four Seasons" was released in 2016. The documentary explores the fate of large swaths of forests that cover Europe after the last ice age, showing how humans have gradually intervened to change the fate of forests and animals.
The film crew traveled through the forests of France, Norway, the Netherlands, Romania and Scotland, tracking the history of wildlife from the Ice Age to the present day, documenting animal behavior rarely seen by humans. In this film, Behan once again shows the eye-opening and difficult photography: migrating and moving a spectacular herd of reindeer, the change of sunlight causing the shadow of the tree to grow rapidly on the ground, the wild horse galloping in the woods and performing its hind legs, the timid little goose ducks are the last to jump from the high tree hole, and the snow is vast and beautiful forest... There are fast and slow, moving and static.
There seems to be no distance between the lens and the animal
Similarly, the documentary has very little narration, and instead of the human voices are the voices of the animals: vibrato, chirping, howling... There are only very few human figures in the film. "Initially, we put humans in a more important position in the film, but we quickly discovered that humans would steal all the attention of the audience, and the animals we wanted to highlight suddenly became supporting characters," Behan said in the interview. The audience's way of thinking has suddenly become: What do humans do in animals? So from shooting, to revising the script, to editing, we were trying to find a suitable position for humans, and in the end we decided to leave only a few silhouettes for humans. ”
Animals are the protagonists of Four Seasons
Regrettably, with the passing of Jacques Behan, his nature documentary work is frozen in The Seasons, and may his soul soar freely like a bird.
Editor-in-Charge: Ying Xu
Proofreader: Luan Meng