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Sunday, November 13, 2022

BROTHERS OF THE WIND / L'AIGLE ET L'ENFANT (2015)

An aura of melancholy and wasted opportunity clings to ‘can’t miss’ films when they miss.  Like LEATHERHEADS/’08, George Clooney’s ‘rollicking’ flop on early pro football; George Lucas’s stillborn  passion-project RED TAILS/’12 about Black WWII pilots; WINDTALKERS/’02, a botched slam-dunk about Navajo Marines bamboozling code-breaking Nazis with their indecipherable native tongue.  And now, meeting all ‘can’t miss’ criteria, BROTHERS OF THE WIND, your basic boy and his dog story, but with an abandoned eaglet in the canine spot, comes up short.  With their documentary background, Gerardo Olivares & Otmar Penker manage some spectacular Alps footage as Eagle Abel (that’s what the kid calls him), slips from the nest and is found, fed & flown by the boy.  One astounding long take follows Abel on the back of a mountain goat as they tumble down half a mountain.  If only the plot weren’t a smorgasbörd of tropes from different cafeterias: mostly WHITE MANE/’53; BORN FREE/’66; and KES/’69.*  Or its characters decently motivated.  Boy and Dad’s relationship most mysterious; what are they doing alone in the Alps anyway?  And then there’s Johnny-on-the-Spot mountain ranger Jean Reno, our long-winded narrator.  Is he tracking the kid with a GPS monitor or what?  If only the boy were a more compelling camera presence.  Our filmmakers all too obviously jonesing for the effortlessly fashionable, yet naturalistic Alain Emery, the boy in Albert Lamorisse’s classic WHITE MANE.  In comparison, this feels patronizing of young and old.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: *WHITE MANE and KES, as mentioned above.  (BORN FREE hasn’t aged well.)  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/08/kes-1969.html            https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/02/crin-blanc-le-cheval-sauvage-white-mane.html

OR:  A closer match, in true documentary form, seen in THE EAGLE HUNTRESS/’16.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-eagle-huntress-2016.html

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