REVIEW: Beavers

I’m not entirely sure this was a real documentary. I feel like it may have been staged. Like ‘Death of a President’ or ‘This is Spinal Tap.’ It’s hard to believe that famed IMAX cinematographer Andy Kitzanuks actually went into the remote regions of the Canadian Rockies in the mid-80’s and shot this movie. Presumably all on film reels. It looks like it was shot on a sound stage in LA with Pomeranians in beaver costumes.

There’s certain shots that seriously bring into question the authenticity of this film. One is where there’s a nighttime shot of a fox along the banks of the river. While the fox is standing there motionless, the camera pans to the right, which makes you think for a moment that the camera is intentionally moving away from the fox, but then, as if on cue, the fox turns as walks in synchronicity with the panning camera. In another shot, the camera follows a beaver swimming underwater up into the inner secure compartment of his beaver dam where his beaver babies are being tended to by their beaver mom. The dam is filmed like a classic sitcom where 3-walls of a living room are intact leaving the fourth wall open to cameras. Like an ant farm. This shot is completely impossible for two reasons: (1) There’s no way beavers would build a dam with a cavernous area that allows for an uninhibited camera to shoot a single transitional shot from underwater to inside the dam; and (2) Even if beavers did somehow incidentally allow for such a pathway to exist in their dam, they certainly would have noticed the camera (and probably camera man) zipping through their domicile and reacted to it. The beavers just act normal. Like it’s Steve Urkel casually having a conversation about human genome alteration with Carl Winslow in the Winslow family living room.

Assuming it’s all real, the camera work is worth the viewing experience, but what the “documentary” has in forehead-slapping cinematography, it lacks in actual conveyance of factual narration. Beavers runs for 33-minutes, but only contains about 5-minutes of dialogue from the narrator. They don’t even attempt to cover the basics, like if beavers mate for life? How long can beavers hold their breath? Do beavers give live birth or do they hatch from eggs? Why are the beavers constantly making noises like their hostages with gags in their mouths? Is that their language? I know all these questions could be answered with a simple Wikipedia search, but this movie came out in 1988, which means a lot of 4th graders on school field trips left the IMAX Theater feeling academically unfulfilled and even though they sat through 33-minutes of non-stop beaver action, they intellectually have nothing to show for it.

All and all, the stunning camera shots make it all worthwhile. It’s such a visual spectacle that even if the movie was totally silent, it would still be worth a viewing.
THUMBS UP!