Magpie Funeral was a pleasure to watch. From the opening scene to the final scene, it captivated my attention and gave me many reasons to smile. It tells the story of the creation of a story, how that story can be adapted into multiple mediums, and how the entire process integrates with life's ups, downs, and challenges. This is a story about love, loss, hope, creative drive, and achieving your dreams. If you're looking for something heartwarming, please give Magpie Funeral a watch.
Sy, our main protagonist, a creative TV news professional, is submitting screenplays, typed using a typewriter, to prestigious film agencies while also suffering from a bad case of writer's block when trying to write new scripts. The writer's block is showcased in a very creative, meta, and hilarious way in the opening scene. Very early on in the film, Sy is burdened with the death of a loved one. In the cemetery, Sy meets Nancy and her daughter Lisa, who are also grieving the recent loss of a loved one. They make a connection when looking at birds, and Sy mentions that magpies have funerals. That tidbit of knowledge becomes inspirational to Nancy, who is also a creative writer. What else do Sy and Nancy have in common? If you're intrigued, I'd highly recommend this film, but I don't want to spoil any plot details that happen beyond the first act of the movie.
From this film I learned that magpies do indeed have funerals. As an animal lover, I always love learning about the beautiful intricacies of animals and how their emotions and rituals are more humanlike than commonly thought. The graveyard scenes with the closeups of birds, dialog between Sy and Nancy, cheerful lighting, and perfectly cued emotional music gave me chills. After learning from Sy what a magpie funeral consists of, I noticed that in the previous scene, which was of the interment portion of a human funeral, the recessional played out exactly how a magpie funeral would also conclude. This is the kind of detail that I can tell is a deliberate choice by the filmmaker, and I relished in the joy of making this metaphorical connection since it dovetails so well with the film's themes and messages.
Beyond the above-mentioned characters, there are quite a few zany people in Magpie Funeral. From Sy's bitterly antagonistic boss/landlord, Nancy's gruff and brash agent, and a wacky lady who plays an even wackier pirate character on Sy's ultra cheesy TV show at his news channel, there's a vast variety. The character performances are well portrayed without being too silly. I recognized two actors in this movie, including Jodi Russell, who I've seen in a couple of other films.
My critiques are quite minor, and don't detract from the enjoyment of the movie. Some visuals were obviously done in post-production, such as engraved letters on a tombstone. I have done some film production and editing myself, so I notice things like that, but realistically I wouldn't think that most viewers would be cognizant of something like that. When a character gets pooped on by a bird, the poop is a bit too thick to be believable and plays an exaggerated sound effect that would feel less out of place if this were an animated movie. The bird poop scene still gave me a good laugh though. Other than those small gripes, I can't really think of anything that wasn't stellar in Magpie Funeral. It truly is a labor of love.
As a movie that's largely about the creation of movies, during and after my viewing of Magpie Funeral, I thought about the relevancy of this film being released in 2023. We're currently in the midst of a seemingly never-ending writer and actor strike in the film and TV industries. The reasons behind the strike are intertwined with both financial uncertainties and creative turmoil as artificial intelligence gets more and more advanced and changes how the entire world functions. Magpie Funeral is proof that AI is nowhere near being remotely close to taking over the jobs of screenwriters, directors, actors, and other important film professionals. This movie was obviously written by a human with a heartbeat, and not an AI platform. A film like this could only be created by a group of humans. If you give it a viewing, you'll see what I mean. This film is inherently human just like how a funeral is inherently magpie.
