Most animal films have a disclaimer at the end stating that no animals were harmed in the making of the film. Not so here. National Geographic Society veterans Dereck and Beverly Joubert merely state that it wasn’t their fault. Following a lioness and her three cubs in Botswana for several months, the Jouberts capture close-up views of the hunt. At the start of the documentary, they’ve become victims of a battle for territory and exiled themselves onto an island with no other lions. Although, an adult lioness may be the queen of the jungle, her cubs are another matter. Not much larger than housecats, they’re easy prey for crocodiles and other animals. The challenge will be going on the hunt while protecting them. Prey arrives in the form of buffalo, but their larger numbers make it difficult to attack.
The narration (read by Jeremy Irons) does its best to shape this into a story of family, but no amount of poetic phrasing (“a life lived by tooth and claw” can turn this into March of the Penguins, although even that depicted cruelty. Phrases like “the little hunter’s heart did skip a small beat” and “triumph…feels a little hollow” do come close to anthropomorphism but are reasonable, if metaphorical, inferences from the evidence. The Jouberts, having followed lions and other animals in Africa for 20 years, ought to know. The narration mentions human encroachment and begins and ends by informing the audience that the number of lions has decreased from an estimated 450,000 to 20,000 in a few decades. However, the story is focused. Excepting the Jouberts themselves during the closing credits, no humans are seen, and, for much of the time, only the one lioness and her cubs. The information content here is medium, and the narrative pretty good, but the photography is stunning.
IMDB link
viewed 3/17/11 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 3/18 and 3/20/11
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