Pick up your own free movie-inspired screensaver at the Winged Migration Web site.

IF ANY MOVIE deserves IMAX treatment, it's Winged Migration. The documentary's amazing closeup shots - front, back and from above - of birds on the wing would be thrilling to see in 70mm.

No matter. Winged Migration is a beautifully photographed 85-minute tribute to birds featuring impressive camera angles, excellent detail and stunning scenery from around the world.

According to its French director, Jacques Perrin, the project was launched after an initial attempt at filming geese from a glider. The cinematographers not only were able to capture good up-close footage, the feeling of acceptance granted by the wild birds - an assistant had to reach out and gently push away individuals that flew too close to the camera lens - brought the amazed crew to happy tears.

Five film teams, including 17 pilots and 14 cinematographers, spent four years on seven continents following migrating birds. As the cameras crisscross the globe from tropical forests to the arctic and desert to seashore, we see birds flying against such breathtaking backdrops as the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty and glaciers.

We also see birds making stopovers where most of us have never imagined them before: spindly cranes landing on hot desert sands and geese hunkered in the snow.

Getting up close and personal
To get up close and personal with their subjects, the filmmakers used a variety of man-made flying machines, including gliders both manned and remote controlled, ultralights, balloons, and even helicopters.

The end results are everything offered by the ground-breaking Fly Away Home and then some. We fly alongside not just Canada geese but ducks, seabirds and cranes, among other species, and from all sorts of unbelievable angles. In one scene reminiscent of The Fifth Element's interstellar freeways, the camera descends rapidly through vertical layers of seabirds gliding near a cliff.

In some shots, it's hard to believe the filmmakers' claim of no special effects. For instance, an arctic tern is shown flying so high above the earth it looks pasted over satellite photos. If this is for real - and maybe it is, considering some cameras went up by balloon - it's fantastic, if completely surreal.

Another scene looks faked for no good reason. You would swear a flock of geese had been filmed in a wind tunnel and superimposed over a blurred landscape of industrial smoke stacks.

But most of Winged Migration is avian poetry in motion. Pelicans' pouches ripple in the breeze. Snow geese fly over green parcels of land and trees blazing with fall colors.

Even standard nature shots, such as birds shown gathered in mind-boggling numbers, are nicely done. Small shorebirds called waders fly in insectlike swarms over the Wadden Sea in Germany, alternately spreading and bunching in massive black clouds. Thousands of geese bobbing on a lake turn to face the camera in unison, their distinctively marked faces creating a startling visual effect.

In another scene, the camera pulls back on tens of thousands of King penguins congregated on a miles-wide ice floe. There are so many birds, they seem to populate an entire continent.

Behavior, too
That's one of the beauties of Winged Migration. It's not just about flying - even that would eventually become boring - it's a behavior film, too. In fact, some of the birds shown do not even migrate.

We get to see the courtship antics of birds from around the world, including the red-crowned crane, which, to the soundtrack accompaniment of plucked strings, arches its neck and prances like a ballerina. Clark's grebes lift themselves out of a lake and skitter across the water on their toes. And, of course, no bird documentary would be complete without scenes of newly hatched chicks begging for food and ducklings hitching rides on their parents' backs.

Neither, unfortunately, would it be complete without the crueler side of nature. Migration is hard work. We see it in wings laboring ceaselessly with the effort of nonstop flying. We fly alongside a duck that blinks its way through a stinging snowstorm.

A bedraggled crane arrives at its destination apparently near death from exhaustion, its wings drooping and feathers askew. In a lighter moment, a flock of Canada geese, a species that appears throughout the movie, are shown landing on a ship at sea and settling in for a snooze on the deck.

The camera averts its gaze during the most graphic segments, such as when a skua eats a cute King penguin chick in front of its parents. I sat through most of Winged Migration tensed for the hunting scene. I had heard it lasted fewer than 30 seconds, but I still did not look forward to it.

It's bearable. As the shots ring out, geese crumple and fall as if in slow motion. No closeups of bullets ripping through breasts, or birds falling away from us out of formation. Such angles probably weren't possible, anyway, if the filmmakers were to remain out of harm's way.

Parrots' cameo
The only parrots featured are a few macaws shown hanging out on the Amazon River. In one of the film's more obviously staged segments, a barge floats by loaded with animal booty from the rainforest – monkeys and birds, including a hyacinth macaw. I won't give away the surprise, but let's just say our hookbill friend steals the scene.

Winged Migration is not big on facts. Perrin reminds us how birds navigate (using the heavens, landmarks and the earth's magnetic field) and uses subtitles to identify the major players and their migration habits. ("The arctic tern flies 12,500 miles from Antarctica to the arctic.")

Otherwise it's a purely visual experience, not a bad thing given the bird's eye view. But I found myself wishing for just a little more information. (Now what kind of goose was that again?) Some birds are not identified at all. A chart listing all the birds filmed and a clever animated migration map on the Web site help fill in the blanks.

I found the soundtrack a bit annoying at times, especially when it strayed from the haunting original music to indulge in dippy pop singles. But the segments including the sound effect of beating wings are inspired.

Still in theaters in late July 2003, the April-released Winged Migration was exhibiting the same impressive staying power of some other small films released in 2003 such as My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

But if it's gone from the small art houses by the time you read this, there's always video. Better yet, maybe an IMAX version of Winged Migration is on its way.