Review of Guadalquivir (2013)

Moving picture

Seen in 2018.

I saw a 51-minute version on SVT with German-language narration, titled Guadalquivir: The Great River, which I assume is identical to Der große Fluss (2014).

Life around the Spanish river.

Nature documentary with old-fashioned emphasis on the purported emotional life of large animals. Some fantastic shots sustain it in spite of the antiquated delivery and rather obvious fakery; there is no way the filmmakers followed a wild fox across 700 km. The scene of a booted eagle chick brutally pecking its younger brother to death and eating it, more to get the mother’s full attention than for immediate hunger, recalls the Freudian obsession with Oedipus Rex (ca. 429 BCE), although the father is absent. Also a good fox fight, beautiful lynx, cool vultures (a griffon bullying black vultures) and awesome chameleons.

moving picture non-fiction nature