Worth: $18.00
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Cast:
Sylvain Tesson (narrator)
Intro:
On a purely visual level, The Velvet Queen is overwhelmingly breathtaking …
“Not everything was created for the human eye,” narrates Sylvain Tesson in Marie Amiguet and Vincent Munier’s exceptional wildlife documentary The Velvet Queen. For Munier and Tesson, humans are interlopers and destroyers of the natural world, who have lost connection to the divinity found in harmony between the species on the planet. Yet, it is through Munier’s eye and Tesson’s narration that the audience is given unprecedented access to the wildlife of the Himalayas, as they search for the elusive snow leopard – the velvet queen of the title.
Directed in conjunction with Marie Amiguet, Munier’s documentary is a philosophical and spiritual journey, as much as it is a glimpse into a remote part of the world, that with the exception of the Tibetan nomads who inhabit the region, is almost untouched by society. The conditions are perishing (Tesson and Murnier camp in weather that reaches minus 29 Celsius), hoping to find the right place to spot the wondrous biota of the region.
Amiguet and Murnier’s film is as much about the journey as it is the destination; Murnier and Tesson pray they will encounter the snow leopard, yet their determination and patience have a multitude of rewards. From capturing beautiful and haunting images of yaks, the Pallas’s cat, antelopes, and even humble owls – the duo create a world that invokes an eternal mystery. The eyes of the animals look straight into the camera but as humans we are unable to fathom what those gazes represent. Murnier is a specialist in his field (an award-winning nature photographer), who understands the habits of the animals that he photographs, but he is less interested in explaining them than he is in understanding our lost connection to them.
For some, the philosophical discussions between Tesson and Murnier will feel redundant, but in many ways, the conversations are what set The Velvet Queen apart from other nature documentaries. When we think about nature documentaries, we think of David Attenborough’s thorough and polished works that impart an enormous amount of educational information. The Velvet Queen instead, allows Tibet and the animals to educate us with their mere existence. “We are so indifferent to the worlds around us,” narrates Tesson. The art of the documentary is to elucidate Tesson’s assertion that “Observation and patience” are a form of love.
Tesson, traditionally a travel writer, wrote about his experience with Murnier in his book The Art of Patience – Seeking the Snow Leopard, and much of his narration for the documentary comes from its pages. His admiration for Murnier is abundant, and his time with him taught him the subtle art of slowing down. The Velvet Queen is a quest, but it is also a meditation on allowing oneself to just exist in harmony with the world, to recreate and honour the lost tradition of being one with the environment instead of being a pollutant destroying it, and ourselves.
Warren Ellis and Nick Cave provide a haunting and beautiful score that evokes the majesty of the images and gives praise to the landscape. Joy and melancholy soar from Ellis’ strings. On a purely visual level, The Velvet Queen is overwhelmingly breathtaking. The audience is given a peek into a hidden world, and as Murnier and Tesson would have it, a moment to contemplate the divine.
In a world that is being rapidly destroyed by rampant industrialisation and human negligence, documentaries like The Velvet Queen are both odes to the natural world and a rallying cry to save what we can. The fundamental modern disconnect from the earth is a zero sum game for all species. The elation of finding a rare species of big cat is palpable for Murnier, but it doesn’t dispel the intense feeling of loss that he experiences as humans obliterate a world they’ve long since forgotten how to co-exist with.
Go into The Velvet Queen with your heart and eyes open, and you will witness wonder; a wonder that is tempered with the reality that such delicate beauty is vanishing. But as Murnier reminds the audience, he had to make a choice whether to “delve into despair or celebrate beauty.” He chose the latter, so we could see what was worth saving.
