Glacier National Park Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Glacier National Park Blu-ray Movie Review

Zoning Out at High Altitude

Reviewed by Michael Reuben July 2, 2012

Glacier National Park lies in northern Montana along the Canadian border, where it adjoins Waterton Lakes National Park in the province of Alberta. The U.S. park itself occupies over a million acres and contains mountains from two sub-ranges of the Rockies, with elevations that vary by 7,000 feet. As of 2010, 25 active glaciers remained in the park, although these are thought likely to disappear within the next twenty years due to changing climate.

The park was created by act of Congress signed by President Taft in 1910. The impetus came from the Great Northern Railway, which had recently completed its transcontinental construction and wanted to stimulate use of the line by advertising the scenic beauty of the region to the public. The railway formed a hotel subsidiary to build lodgings in the newly established national park.

When cars became the dominant mode of American transportation, the Sun Road was built through the center of the park. During the New Deal, the government-funded Civilian Conservation Corp put hundreds of young men to work in the park doing reforesting, campground development, trail construction and fire-reduction chores.

Today the park is protected as a wilderness, although Congress has yet to declare it as such officially.

Now, most of the above is not part of the narration on Wilderness Video's Glacier National Park released by Image Entertainment. (Well, a few dates, figures and geographical facts are slipped in here and there.) I looked it up after viewing the Blu-ray, because I was curious. The sole and straightforward goal of this "coffee table" disc is to wow you with imagery, and on that score it succeeds.

The narrators speaking on the principal audio track, one male, one female, are not identified in the credits and seem to have been chosen for the soothing tonality of their voices. Certainly there's no reason to listen to them for substance. The narration has been written to emphasize the same "golly!" factor as the photography. For example:

Somewhere between heaven and earth, there is a land of natural beauty that so perfectly reflects nature in all its splendor, where the color blue is a proclamation, where the majestic mountaintops play in the clouds and touch the sky, where the grasses are greener than anything ever before seen, and the flowers bask in the knowing that life is a celebration of color and fragrance.

In fairness, I've chosen a particularly information-free passage, and others do contain rudimentary background on such topics as the early Native American inhabitants of the region and the prehistoric shifting of subterranean forces that created the area now encompassed within the park.

As with most video works of armchair tourism, however, the essential purpose of Glacier National Park is to afford you a better trip than you could ever experience on your own, without leaving the comfort of your viewing room. Indeed, the aerial vistas captured by the cameramen, including producer Robert Glusic, are nothing short of spectacular. Mountain peaks soar majestically, waterfalls tumble in what appears, at a distance, to be slow motion, and glacial ice extends in an expanse whose vastness masks its true fragility. As the helicopter bearing the hi- definition camera passes through the park and into the sister park in Alberta, and the editor artfully weaves in time-lapse photography of sunsets, as well as views from land vehicles and even on foot, the viewer can luxuriate in the glories of nature brought to sumptuous life by the wonders of advanced technology.

But that's about all there is to Glacier National Park. When it comes to exploring the park's history, or its unique geological underpinnings, or the astonishing array of flora and fauna to be found there (and possibly not for much longer as the weather patterns continue to shift), or even the fascinating trends of U.S. history that the park's existence represents, the narration does no more than skim the surface. There aren't even study guides or text screens included as extras to let the viewer know how much more there is to the park than eye candy. From that point of view, I guess it could be said that Glacier National Park is a perfect specimen of a certain kind of Blu-ray.

Glacier National Park Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

In an odd choice for a Blu-ray issued when the format was mature, Image has chosen to encode Glacier National Park with the MPEG2 codec, but the choice doesn't seem to have hurt the results, probably because the source material was a high-resolution digital image. (According to Wilderness Video, all of their images are captured at 4K resolution.) The detail of mountain peaks, rocky terrain, waterfalls, glacial ice and varied flora are seen in minute detail on this 1080i Blu-ray, with no aliasing and only an occasional hint of video noise to remind you that you aren't looking through a window onto nature. The time-lapse sequences have been smoothly engineered, as are the occasional sequences that involve digital panning around a high-resolution still photograph. The latter can be difficult to spot, because the landscapes being photographed are so majestically still. On more than one occasion, I was certain I was looking at a still, only to realize that some tiny portion of the frame showed movement (usually water). As befits the chillier clime in which these images were taken, the colors are generally cool and muted, and the contrast has been carefully maintained so that the whites of the snowy glaciers don't overwhelm subtle details. Imagery is the main reason to acquire this disc, and it is well represented.

Glacier National Park Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

No fewer than five audio options are available, although the manner of selecting them is not as simple as it should be. First, one must select Dolby Digital 5.1 or stereo. The latter, though not so designated on the menu, is lossless PCM 2.0. Then one must choose among three options: narration (with music); music only; or ambient sounds. The first two are available in both DD 5.1 and PCM 2.0. The last, ambient sounds, is available only as PCM 2.0, though this too is not indicated on the menu.

The narration has been discussed above; both narration tracks reproduce the voices with clarity. Switching to the music track, in both 5.1 and 2.0, provides the same background music at roughly the same volume as on the narration track. I recommend the lossless PCM track, as there was no obvious benefit from the use of the discrete multi-channel format.

The ambient sound track should be avoided, unless one is seeking slumber. It's like turning on a white noise machine.

Glacier National Park Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No extras are included on the disc.

Glacier National Park Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

In the forensic arena, National Geographic has released a Blu-ray about Glacier National Park that zeroes in on its function as a tragic laboratory for studying the impact of climate change. But such issues are beyond the scope of Wilderness Video's disc. Theirs is an offering for marveling and peaceful contemplation. If that is what you seek, the Blu-ray is recommended.