L'incredibile volo

This is poetic, emotional, breathtaking film-making blessed with a truly inspiring Mark Isham score. The theme song, "10,000 Miles", is achingly beautiful and is first used with intuitive irony over the film's opening credit sequence.

Anna Paquin is the little girl who, with her father, Jeff Daniels, "imprints" with a flock of young geese and leads them, via homemade aircraft, to a new home thousands of miles away.

The flight sequences, which combine real flying with computer-assisted imagery over rivers, pastures and cityscapes, are flawless. They capture the awe and staggering thrill of flight without ever resorting to unnecessary, contrived stuntwork.

Daniels, not a regular face on the silver screen these days, is natural and likable as Paquin's eccentric father while Paquin once again demonstrates what a brilliant talent she is.

The narrative builds to an exciting conclusion as the film's environmental theme is amplified.

Director Ballard, who also made the striking BLACK STALLION and the stark NEVER CRY WOLF, brings acute visual economy to every scene and never allows the film's underlying theme to become preachy.

Caleb Deschanel, the film's cinematographer, gives us flawless images that frequently drop the jaw.

A major achievement in a minor key.

Following Toy Story comes Fly Away Home, another string to the increasingly large bow of children's films that adults can also enjoy. The story follows Amy, a 13-year-old New Zealand girl who is forced to live with her estranged father in Canada following a car crash that kills her mother. Amy becomes increasingly withdrawn and upset until she finds a collection of similarly orphaned goslings that she takes care of, nurturing them until they are ready to migrate to the southern United States.

The film could easily have fallen into the sappy ‘family film' category. However, it never lets itself, choosing to concentrate more on characters than moments. Amy's character, played with breathtaking maturity by Anna Paquin, is better developed and more complex than characters in most films aimed at adults. The supporting cast also flesh out their strong characters to make the whole film much more believable.

The cinematography is beautiful, the dusky-autumnal scenes are captured in an explosion of reds and yellows and oranges that seem to wash over you time and time again, and the final flight sequence is a wonderful closing to an incredibly refreshing film.

A family film .. yes but certainly one that can be watched and watched again without the need for a licensing child. Jeff Daniels is superb as an eccentric father who takes on board his daughter after his estranged wife's death in a car accident. A strong supporting cast (including geese) are driven to support Amy's desire to assist a bunch of orphaned geese to maintain a wild existence. This involves teaching the geese to fly and leading them South by air. This journey for both the daughter coping with grief after the loss of her mother, the father in discovering his daughter once more and the geese in finding a new home for the Winter adds up to .. well tears and more tears.

Before you write this film off as "fantasy" take the time to watch the BBC's Life of Birds final part. There you meet a remarkable farmer from the US who is using a microlite to aid a few of the last remaining Whooping Cranes to re-establish migratory patterns.

In the UK the site of skeins of wild geese migrating in Winter form their Summer homes in Iceland and the Arctic circle is one of the last great wildlife dramas left on this small island. The views in Fly away Home of Amy's geese as they move in to join the hundreds of wild geese powering South capture this majesty. This story of a group of people who care about and assist this natural pattern may help reinforce some of the awe that we should all feel when confronted with these epic and annual journeys.

I got sucked into a movie on the satellite dish the other day, 'Fly Away Home.' It's a story about a young motherless girl (Amy) who rescues some wild goose eggs and basically becomes their mother. The story evolves as the goslings grow into young adult birds ready to fly south. Since they never had parents the geese haven't learned to fly. The girl's dad thinks he can get them to fly by following him in his ultra-light. But they will only follow Amy. So dad teaches her to fly. Soon the geese are flying. Next, dad and Amy hatch a plot to fly south and have the geese follow them. We know this actually happened when 2 scientists did something similar.

One of the reasons I was sucked into this wonderful family movie was the photography. It is National Geographic quality. In fact I was so impressed with the cinematography that I had to look up who did it: Caleb Deschanel. The setting, a farm in Southern Ontario, allowed him to become intimate with the geese and the natural setting. Another reason I couldn't stop watching the movie was the stunning performance by Anna Paquin, the 16-year old girl who played Amy. I remembered her from the movie, 'Piano.' She played Flora, the daughter of Holly Hunter. I'm sure they picked Paquin to do that part because of her speaking ability. Holly Hunter played the part of Ada, a woman who couldn't talk. She communicated with sign language through her daughter. Paquin was so good in her part that she won the Oscar, quite a feat for an 11-year old.

The story, 'Fly Away Home' is touching because she's not the kind of Hollywood-trained child actor you find in most movies. A surprising thing happened as I watched Amy and her geese. I could sense a startling serenity from her as the bond had developed between them. I wondered how she could manage that. She was only a 16-year old actress then but she conveyed a mothering instinct that goes back to the ageless beginnings of life on this planet. When the goslings were following her around, much of the photography was from ground level. Later when they were all flying, the photography was right there in the flying formation. You were seeing the birds, in flight, right next to you. The beauty of motion was unbelievable. I thought, 'How could anyone shoot these creatures?' There is beauty in seeing them fly. There is beauty in seeing them in their habitat. But the overwhelming beauty is in their living. They deserved that life. It made me think of this sad planet and the billions of creatures that have died because of the human race. Here was a story that went against the slaughter. When Amy and her birds arrived at their destination in Chesapeake Bay I had misty eyes.

So I'm a soft touch.

Amy Alden (Anna Paquin) survives a car crash where her mother is killed. She leaves New Zealand to live with her father Thomas (Jeff Daniels) in his ramshackle house in Ontario, Canada. She has no memories of her Canadian home and feels isolated. He's an eccentric inventor artist who flies his homemade glider. Susan Barnes (Dana Delany) is his girlfriend. After a land developer tears down some trees, Amy finds an abandoned nest of goose eggs. She raises the chicks but when the time comes, she has to teach them to fly south.

This is a fine family movie. Anna Paquin is adorable and so are the chicks. The story is gentle feel good. Jeff Daniels is great as the eccentric dad. There is a real free feeling that comes from watching people run around with these geese. There is a minor drama with a wildlife officer and a main one with a land developer. In the end, the drama isn't too high but it's good for the whole family.