Der Ornithologe

A bird-watcher in jungles of Portugal gets lost and embarks on a journey of rediscovery of self and religion.Apparently ,this Portuguese film is an homoerotic allegory of the life of St Anthony of Padua,who is considered the patron saint of lost things,and whose original name was Fernando.The film is shot at beautiful locations to start with and works well till the ornithologist gets lost while kayaking.Then begins the torture,as the film descends from realism into supposed transcendental surrealism.There appear two Chinese lesbians tied up in a bondage relationship,members of a cult who dance and kill a boar in the middle of the night,a shepherd by the name of Jesus who makes out with the protagonist and who the latter ends up stabbing,nude huntresses riding horses and remains of a monastery.I am not sure if this work shud be classified as magic realism.The ornithologist was on medication since the very beginning,and ends up losing his pills when he meets with an accident.It can be argued then that whatever happened after that was in his mind.I watched the film because this film was on the ' to be watched' list of a friend.Maybe the cinematography made him like this nut job.

"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.

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.

The distinct individualism of João Pedro Rodrigues' worldview is turned inward via an unflaggingly intriguing poetical riff on the life of St. Anthony of Padua in "The Ornithologist."

While possibly the director's most accessible film to date, calling this visually striking work "accessible" doesn't mean most audiences will fully understand Rodrigues' delightfully meandering paths, nor appreciate his homoerotic, playfully blasphemous modernised hagiography.

Religious conservatives will be as apoplectic as they were with Godard's "Hail Mary," but art-house lovers, including those not always in sync with the "To Die Like a Man" helm-er's style should find much pleasure, even if they're perplexed by what it all means.

Narratively, the film gets even more bizarre. A Latin-speaking Amazon (performance artist Juliane Elting, whose stage moniker pays fantastic tribute to Julian Eltinge) calls Fernando by the name Anthony, and by the time he meets Jesus' identical twin brother, Thomas, actor Hamy has been replaced by director Rodrigues.

Visually, "The Ornithologist" is Rodrigues' most classically shot film, and the first entirely lenses outdoors. Regular collaborator Rui Poças brings out the richness of the forest and river canyon in all its natural splendours, at times almost hinting at a European version of the sylvan spirit of Thai magical realism rather than the lurid spectacle of the director's "The Last Time I Saw Macao." Unsurprisingly given both the title and the director's academic training, avian scenes are lovingly realised and a constant source of wonder.

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.