Der Ornithologe

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.

"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.

One of the few (if not the only) films that can take so many leaps into the plot, instigating you to embrace the idea and watch until the end. The new film by João Pedro Rodrigues, a guy who has always embraced the theme "queer" in his work, because there are, yes, great films in the gay scene for the LGBT community made by him. One that I really enjoyed was "The Phantom" (2000). It's his, too; "Odete" (2005) and "The Last Time I Saw Macau" (2012). It's curious how your cinema breathes Pasolini (but it's not a comparison). I think Rodrigues, like Gregg Araki, Gus Van Sant and Pedro Almodóvar, citing my favorites, are real filmmakers who hover the flag. But none of them focuses exclusively on the subject as Rodrigues - who also proved to go to other ways with this film. "The Ornithologist" is a journey of self-discovery. A bucolic adventure of a hermit in the wild heart. With some terrifying and surreal passages. The ending is totally wrapped in mysteries (just like the whole movie) and open to various interpretations. Their cinema is not childish, so the drama is strengthened by maturity and always bring erotic situations and sex scenes without fear of the showing. Nudity here is the most curious point, especially in a movie that never shows, a priori, clues to anything, just makes it happen. But, as I said earlier, the swings are the big cheap of the tape. It's a plot-twist after another. It is an exotic, economical and creative production. Yes. "I'm recovering ..." The Portuguese also make a daring and original cinema. This is a real lesson in script and direction. The sensation is almost a trip without purposeful destiny. Is it really that Fernando wants to go home?

Oh, before I forget, it's a religious-themed film, in fact, it could not be missed. It is always pertinent to poke the jaguar with the short stick, right?

It is another collaboration with João Rui Guerra da Mata, art director, screenwriter, and finally, filmmaker, who always works on Rodrigues' films.

A staunch queer cinema visionary and nonconformist, Portuguese filmmaker João Pedro Rodrigues' fifth feature beguilingly takes a leap of faith onto a religious theme, a pilgrimage to Saint Anthony of Padua, conspicuously transcribing its story into the existential trials and tribulations of our titular ornithologist Fernando (Hamy), which is also St. Anthony's birth name, stranded in a modern-day Portuguese waterway and forests.

Fernando, an atheist from the word go, embarks on his stork-scouting journey with gusto and alacrity, and the implication that it is not his first sortie in the area makes his adventure quite up his alley. Few background information is purveyed, other than he is under medication and has a male lover who is caring for him. Contrasting Fernando's bird-watching/telescopic angle with different bird's-eye views, it is the modus operandi brings home a numinous frisson of watching and simultaneously being watched, literally sublimates the nature's gaze with a plethora of wild feathered friends hovering around incessantly through the film. When Fernando's kayak is upset during the rapids, the story starts to take shape into a multi-layered religious mythology through Fernando's various real/surreal encounters, garnished with sexual innuendos (undressed and tied- up by two young Chinese female God-bothers, a sadomasochistic position enticing one's fantasy; the urolagnia experience in the darkness among a contingent of masqueraded roarers), and an in- the-buff dalliance with a deaf-mute shepherd boy named Jesus (Cagiao), which ends in manslaughter, a startling incident but concocted with blasé wantonness.

Conceivably, when one liquidates Jesus, there is nothing but a road to redemption beckons him, Fernando must carry on his mythical transmogrification into a pious St. Antony by dint of his self- inflicted ritual for absolution (that is where symbolic tunnel, tableaux vivants and inscrutable gestures abound), consummated by being dispatched by the alter ego of Jesus, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, if credits must be given to Rodrigues' wheeze of contemplating a grand mythos within an entrancing temporal sphere, his didactic exegesis is less a merit to be reckoned with.

Leading actor Paul Hamy credibly shoulders on a role which requires boldness and physical exertion, instils his open-faced earthiness into the overlaying mystique and alone-in-the-woods background, which successfully retains Fernando in the cynosure, even when narrative longueur inevitably lurks. Tellingly, the film renders a captivating landscape to those eyes yearning for natural's majestic design, whether it is the picturesque on the surface or the uncanny residing in the deep, also the foley artists (Nuno Carvalho and Martin Delzescaux) ply their own distinctive aural intrusion to that latter effect: eerie, preternatural and strident. In the end of the day, THE ORNITHOLOGIST is another contrived fable trying to mythicize religion in order to elicit a sense of meta-sanctity of our own existence, but the fruition thuddingly slumps between artsy-fartsy and nonplussing, on top of that, where are the storks, anyway?