EIFF 2009: The Crimson Wing

After 90 minutes spent contemplating flamingos two things struck me. The first was that this garish creature with its too big, upside-down beak and impossibly lanky body really should not be able to fly. The second, that the flamingo – like all birds only a short evolutionary step from the dinosaurs – is ultimately so weird, so completely alien, that any real sense of empathy between it and us is impossible. Yet this is exactly what The Crimson Wing hopes to create. An emotive, soaring soundtrack and poetic narration (huskily intoned by Mariella Frostrup) combine with spectacular cinematography to tell the story of a year-in-the-life of a flamingo in all its beauty and cruelty, from images of the multitudinous flocks on the scarlet lakes of the Rift Valley to scenes of flamingos being gobbled up by nightmarish marabou storks and hyenas. What all this produces is the cinematic equivalent of a coffee table book; a beautiful object but, ultimately, one that fails to draw us in.