Born Free it is not…
OK
There is an ‘arts’ movie theater around the corner from us called The Paris.
It has been there forever and it I don’t know how they make a living. It’s across the street from The Plaza Hotel on the corner of 58th Street and Fifth Avenue, so the rents must be astronomical.
However, in an era of multiplexes, The Paris generally runs great, and mostly European films. This is where I saw Mao‘s Last Dancer. There are never any lines, they run one movie for a month, and the median age of the audience is probably around 85. I like it. It’s got a big screen and it’s quiet. And generally empty.  I hope whoever is paying for this lives forever.
Last night we went to see The Last Lions, which is a documentary film produced by National Geographic.
Jeremy Irons narrated.
There are no people in the fim, only lions.. and in an attempt to make the film hold up for its full 90 minutes, the producers have introduced an anthropomorphic ‘humanization’ of the lion ‘characters’. A femal lion’s ‘husband’ dies and she is left with three cubs to care for while the rest of the pride (or lions) is out to kill her and her cubs. You get the idea.
Don’t get me wrong, the cinematography is great. Spectacular. Astonishing. Particularly when seen on the ‘big screen’. You don’t see this hardly at all any more.
The fim was shot by National Geographic “Explorers In Residence” (which must be just about the world’s greatest job), Derek and Beveryl Joubert. (I fail to undersatnd why Derek grabs all the good credits like Director, Producer, Cinematographer, DP and Writer. Poor Beverly only gets a co-producer credit. Comeon Derek. It’s your wife for crying out loud. You’re a team….. OK. Enough on that.
The problem with the film is that, in all honesty, it seems a bit tired. A bit Disneyesque. A bit like Wild Kingdom with Marlin Perkins (on TV in the 1950s).
There is a really serious issue here.
50 years ago there were 500,000 lions in the world. Today there are only 20,000.
(I read in The Guardian last week that there are American hunters going to Africa to shoot and kill lions for their skins!)
This is a real serious issue and I think that less making the lions into ‘characters’ and more of the Jouberts on screen along with ‘what the hell happened to all the lions’ would have been better.
I think people can take the truth.
Maybe
And they don’t need to be spoon fed.
On the other hand, fantastic cinematography.
