Der Ornithologe

I can't say that I don't respect this film. There's a lot going on underneath, but it's one of those films that you either get or you don't. I don't think I fully got it, either in a intellectual level or on an emotional one. Even if the former doesn't come at first, if the latter does, that's all that matters. The film lost me, but I also know it's one that will benefit from rewatches and further introspection. I can't wait to really gather my thoughts on it to see how it fares with time for me. In the meantime, I recommend it, with hesitations, but only to the right people.

"Fernando" (Paul Hamy) is out in the Portuguese wilderness doing a bit of birdwatching when he gets caught up in the rapids, his canoe is trashed and he finds himself rescued by two rather curious Chinese women - "Fei" (Han Wen) and her girlfriend "Ling" (Chan Suan). Things get a bit on the surreal side from this point as his journey continues and he next encounters the handsome, mute, goatherd "Jesus" (Xelo Cagiao) before a rather unfathomable tragedy ensues and the story takes on an almost fantastic nature that sees "Fernando" having to come to terms with his actions all under the supervision of a beautiful white dove that clearly has a more symbolic function as yet to be explained. Is he ever going to make it to civilisation? Does he really want to? It's quite a curious film, this, with no obvious purpose to it. Initially, it looks more like a natural history docudrama with some lovely photography of birds in their natural habitat and us (and him) as mere observers, but once his trip becomes less routine the story starts to head seriously off piste and becomes a bit too random for me. It's not that it isn't structured, it's that director João Pedro Rodrigues doesn't seem so bothered about taking us with him as his mind wanders for two hours of really quite eccentrically indulgent moviemaking. There's little rhyme-nor-reason to the second act, if you like, as "Fernando" discovers what looks like the abandoned garden from the late Michael Jackson's estate amidst the forest then some Amazonian type paintballers with Centaur aspirations! It's quirky and inquisitive about attitudes to faith - and not just 20th century faiths at that - and I did like the last five minutes, but on balance I found it quite a long watch to leave feeling slightly bamboozled.

it is the most comfortable definition. and, maybe, the most precise. because, except the trip of an ornithologist across a forest, strange meetings and fantastic adventures, nothing could be known. but, it is not exactly an enigma. and not a cryptic improvisation. it has a lot of cultural references and this does it, in same measure, a religious film, an art film, a form of fairy tale - the rules are the same - or an experiment remembering Bunuel. but significant is not what the director says . the key remains the final feeling. without a reasonable name but who could be defined as fascination. and this is the basic virtue of this challenge/provocative film. to recognize pieces from Romano Catholic hagiography, to see fragments of expressionism, to admire an eulogy of psychoanalysis or the deep solitude like a source of escape from yourself.

When I came out of The Ornithologist I was totally perplexed and unsure of what I had just seen. At one point I thought it was a film about one man's descent into madness, at another I thought it was a tale of the mystery and spirituality of nature and the unknown, a film about loneliness and despair, then I thought maybe it was a character study of queerness and male sexuality. For all I know this film could be all of these things or none of them whatsoever.

Because I don't want to spoil anything - and because I can't describe what happens in this film without sounding like a lunatic, I'll say this: the film follows a solitary Ornithologist who gets lost in the forest and the increasingly strange things that happen to him as he tries to find his way home.

Funnily enough, The Ornithologist plays almost like a parody of an art-house film - and like most art-house, this is not a film for everyone. Consider yourself warned. In terms of its structure, the unfolding of its narrative as well as the way it uses images and sounds to unnerve and to hypnotize you - this is either going to infuriate or bewitch viewers. I can happily say that I was completely bewitched. I fell under its spell, it got under my skin in a way that I cannot describe and I couldn't stop thinking about it after I saw it. I am under no illusion that I understand most of what I saw, but watching it I could tell that this is exactly the film that director João Pedro Rodrigues wanted to make - it makes no compromises for anybody.

The Ornithologist is daring and strange - there are so many unanswered questions, and I couldn't possibly explain to you what it's about or what happens without sounding certifiably insane, but I am so fine with that - I was completely mesmerized. Give it a chance; you might hate it with every fiber of your being or you might love it and be as enchanted by it as I was.

Imagine if Robert Bresson and Walerian Borowczyk were a single person, a synthesis filmmaker. Now imagine that person is gay. Now imagine that person had a fever dream. That dream would be "The Ornithologist". (If you understood that sentence we're soulmates).

If you're in the market for a psycho-sexual erotic biblical parable that flirts with bondage, urination fetish, bestiality, and just good old fashion beautiful men rolling around naked on a beach, but, you know, all done in an artistically austere, under- emphasized way and then hazed into a hallucinatory mist of a story, then this is your jam right here.

What did I think of it?

I thought it was AWESOME!