Animal Movies

Fly Away Home is a 1996 film, directed by Carroll Ballard, about the daughter (Anna Paquin) of a widower (Jeff Daniels) who, with her father, leads a flock of Canada geese from Canada to a wildlife refuge in the US.

The film was loosely based on the real-life experiences of Bill Lishman, a Canadian inventor, artist, and ultralight aircraft hobbyist. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Lishman openly wondered if geese and similar birds could be taught new migration patterns by following ultralight aircraft onto which they had been imprinted. In 1993, after several years of logistical and bureaucratic setbacks, Lishman successfully led a flock of Canada Geese on a winter migration from Ontario, Canada to Northern Virginia, U.S.A. Of the 16 birds that participated in the migration, 13 of them returned the following year entirely on their own.

Plot

At the beginning of the film, while riding in a car with her mother, 13-year-old Amy Alden (Anna Paquin) is in an accident which kills her mother. Her father, Thomas Alden (Jeff Daniels), comes to New Zealand and brings her back to Canada a month after the accident. Understandably, Amy is still in shock over her mother’s death, and is slow to warm to her father and her new life. Amy and her father have not seen or been in touch since Amy had left with her mother to live in New Zealand when she was three years old.

Thomas Alden is an artist, an inventor, and a naturalist. His intelligence is evidenced by the complex inventions and works of art and sculpture that lie around his house and property. Amy also discovers that he has a girlfriend, Susan (Dana Delany) who lives with her father. Amy’s initial reception of Susan is similar to that of her father: Amy makes it very clear that Susan is not welcome in her life.

Amy sets off to explore her new surroundings on her own and adjust to her new life, stopping only sometimes when she has to attend school. Early one morning, a crew of construction vehicles comes along and destroys a place that has been the nesting area for Canadian wild geese. Amy goes out to investigate and finds a bunch of eggs that a nesting mother goose was forced to abandon. Amy rescues the eggs and incubates them inside an old dresser within the barn. When she comes to check on the eggs later on, the goslings are hatched. As Amy is the first living thing they see, she is “imprinted” as their mother; thus they follow her everywhere from then on in the story.

Thomas consults with a game warden about how to feed and care for the geese. He does not know that in Canada, one of the game warden’s job responsibilities is to pinion the wings of any parentless migratory birds so that they can no longer take flight. Being flightless, there are fewer dangers and hazards for the birds themselves and others. However, as he attempts to do so with one of the goslings, Amy becomes outraged, hits him with a popcorn bowl and locks herself and the goslings in the bathroom. The game warden is then thrown off the Alden property by Thomas.

As the geese grow and mature it becomes obvious to Thomas, Amy, and all their friends that the birds must migrate or the game warden will return to pinion their wings to keep them from ever flying. In the meantime, Thomas’ brother, David (Terry Kiney) knows of an Ornithologist in the United States who tells him about land in North Carolina where a bird sanctuary is. There is a catch however: birds have not lived at the sanctuary for a long time, and developers have expressed interest in the land. Unless birds are shown to be nesting in the area by November first of that year, the sanctuary will become the property of the developers.

David and Thomas agree that the land would be prime for the geese, and Thomas proposes a plan to get the geese to follow him in an aircraft and he will fly south using an ultralight slow-moving aircraft, showing them the way to migrate. At first, his experiments to get the geese to follow him flying are not successful, as they remain on the ground with Amy. Finally, Amy attempts to fly her father’s ultralight, and the geese take off after her. However, she ends up crashing near the fence, and to her father’s immense relief, is unharmed. Thomas eventually gets a second ultralight craft and trains Amy on how to fly it. All is going according to plan until the night before the planned launch. The game warden comes while the Alden family is out searching for the stranded goose named Igor, and takes the remaining caged geese.

Thomas, his brother, and a mutual friend, Barry (Holter Graham), enact a plan to free the geese, and to launch their flight plan. The geese are freed, and Thomas and Amy, flying in their aircraft, get the geese to follow them, flying over Lake Ontario and eventually landing at the U.S. Niagara Air Force Base by nightfall, nearly getting arrested. A news crew is alerted of the feat and Amy and her father quickly become national news. On their journey south over the U.S. eastern seaboard they are supported, encouraged, fed, and sheltered by approving citizens along the way.

It is only a matter of time at the bird sanctuary location. A huge crowd of supporters have assembled and they halt the construction crew, which plans to start work so that the developers can claim the land ahead of the deadline. Then, when Amy and her father are nearly there, one of the rudders on Thomas’ ultralight comes loose and he crash-lands in a corn field. Amy panics and lands immediately to come to her father’s aid. He is slightly injured with a dislocated shoulder, and his ultralight is damaged by the landing, but he tells her that if they wait for help, it might be too late. He tells Amy they are too close to their destination and that she should go on without him. Reassuring her that she has the natural talent as well as her mother’s spirit alongside her, she then returns to fly off in her aircraft, continuing the remainder of the journey with the geese alone. Thomas then hitches a ride with participants of the land strike while Amy flies the last leg of the journey on her own.

While flying over the town of Newhope, Amy gains the excited attention of the town’s citizens who gaze on in awe as she flies overhead. Thomas soon arrives at the sanctuary before Amy and requests that the crowd quiet down so they can listen for Amy and her aircraft. After a short amount of time, Amy’s aircraft and the geese appear over a hill and are greeted enthusiastically by the entire crowd as she circles to land, the geese landing in a nearby lake.

The credits roll as additional footage plays in the background, showing all sixteen geese returning to the Alden farm.

Reception

For a modest budget, Fly Away Home returned $25 million in the U.S. box office and $31 million worldwide. Audiences enjoyed the evocative family oriented film which also received critical acclaim; Roger Ebert noted that “there are individual shots here almost worth the price of admission… …a stunning shot in which the towers of Baltimore materialize from the mist, and office workers see the little girl and her geese flying past their windows.”