Les oiseaux de passage

This marvelous movie takes place in Colombia, within the Peninsula of the Guajirain, a sparsely populated and arid area, and mostly played with Wayuu autochthons. This timeless univers is characterized by a rather pronounced communitarianism, each village highlighting its differences with the surrounding ones, while the origin of these differences remains, as often, unexplained and obscure. Nevertheless, they share ancestral traditions, folklore and values such as honor and family bonds. Thus, during the first 30 minutes, we do not really know when the film takes place, until the informative and surprising appearance of cars. Thus, we may guess that we are in the 60s / 70s. A marriage proposal between a man and a woman from two neighboring tribes will be, by a strange combination of circumstances related to an exorbitant dowry, the opportunity to integrate the marijuana trafficking, which is a very lucrative universe while slowly distorting personalities. Like in a Greek tragedy, these families will ineluctably suffer a descent into hell, via the classical 'eye for eye, tooth for tooth' philosophy.

The film is visually sober and simple, but of an exacerbated aestheticism, with an unusual care about details, including birds. Moreover, the actors are excellent, especially the two main ones: José Acosta (Rapayet) and Carmiña Martínez (Úrsula).

"Birds of Passage" (2018 release from Colombia; 125 min.) is a drug drama about a Wayuu (northern Colombia) family. As the movie opens, Zaida has completed her year of confinement "with grace and dignity" according to her mom, and now the village is celebrating Zaida becoming a woman. Rapayet, a young man in the village, has his eyes on her, and his uncle asks Zaida's family. The family, however, is demanding a dowry of 30 goats and 20 cows, among other things. Rapayet needs to come up with money, lots of money, and by coincidence (when a Peace Corps guy is looking for weed) gets involved in the drug trade... At this point we're less than 15 min. into the movie but to tell you more of the plot will spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: this is the latest movie from Ciro Guera (who previously brought us the equally excellent "Embrace of the Serpent") and Cristina Gallego. "Birds of Passage" follows one particular family's involvement in the drug trade from 1968 to 1980, and the movie is brought in 5 chapters (called "Songs" in the movie: Song I Wild Grass 1968' Song II The Graves 1971, etc. When you heard the words "drug trade" and "Colombia", we typically associate them with movies like "Escobar: Paradise Lost". "Birds of Passage" is a completely different type drug drama, mostly because this deal with an isolated clan, where family and tradition means everything (literally), and due to the small and remoteness of this clan, everything becomes personal very quickly. The cast, unknowns but for Natalia Reyes (who plays Zaida), is generally outstanding. Last but not least, be sure to check out the scenery, which is almost a character in and of itself.

"Bird of Passage" premiered at last year's Cannes film festival to great acclaim, and it finally appeared this weekend at my local art-house movie theater, I couldn't wait to see it. The Sunday matinee screening where I saw this at was attended poorly (6 people including myself). If you are interested in seeing a Colombia drug drama from a very different perspective that what you probably envision, I'd readily suggest you check this out, be it in the theater (if you still can), on VOD, or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray, and draw your own conclusion.

Guerra & Gallego's Wayuu crime epic is dense and beautiful, but a necessary part of its long maudlin descent is that it becomes a serious drag especially towards the end. It's not as transformatively psychedelic as Guerra's Embrace which I adore but it has some seriously brilliant sequences and the sprawling (mainly Wayuu) ensemble cast gives it a beautiful foundational weight. I felt like I learned a lot about this period and place as well as the dark ripples which a sudden influx of money can have on people's choices, on power and greed. It's harrowing because although it is set somewhere very specific, it feels like it could have happened anywhere.

Birds of Passage (Pájaros de verano in Spanish) is a striking and fascinating look into an 'alien' world, a term I use here because this film is a deep dive into another time and far different culture. It could be another planet almost. The film is about events in the 60's and 70's especially regarding the Wayuu of northern Colombia, an Indigenous culture quite divorced from Columbia proper with a distinct language and customs quite different from the rest of Columbia. The English translation presented is always that they are 'Indians' but quite unique if you compare only to the Indians of America. If you look at a map of Columbia, the colorful Wayuu inhabit the peninsula that juts out into the Atlantic in the far north. It's a desert area in part but has green agricultural area in the hills, where marijuana was cultivated very successfully. This film is brilliant and riveting but has the drawback in our own culture of having subtitles, but deserves an audience beyond the multiplex. This great work of movie art retells the story of the Wayuu during the late 60's, early-70's, when Peace Corps volunteers were in the area and the gringos were looking for pot. I understand the fascination of tribal cultures from my own Peace Corps service in Iran, also in the late-60's, and the attraction to cannabis from nearby Afghanistan. As is striking in indigenous cultures, the family is everything to the protagonists of the film with trust in the dream world (literally), family tribal elders and the ways of their ancestors. This area had deep poverty before the exporting of the region's very potent marijuana to the states was embraced. The demand was fed by young Americans willing to pay top dollar for it. I can speak to this also as in 1971 Colombian pot was around in New York City that we called the "two puff stuff". I didn't know anything about origins of this marijuana. I did know a pilot, who had served in the Vietnam and flew planeloads of pot out of Columbia into the States so I had some awareness of the demand. There are better descriptions than I will make of plot details of this film here on IMDB. Not noted directly in the film: by the mid-1980's the violent Medellin cartel took over the Marijuana business from the Wayuu and their region descended again into poverty. The Wayuu people stepped away from further drug-related violence, as had been unleased previously within their clan groups who had run their region's elicit trade. I emphasize in my review the universal theme presented in the film of the undoing of greed and betrayal on traditional and humane values. This epic film ends with a 'war' between warring families or clans. This film is from Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra, who made the unusual "Embrace of the Serpents", a striking and hallucinatory Oscar nominated film, very highly rated on IMDB, but not by me. I didn't appreciate that film as much Birds of Passage. However, having seen this later film from this incredible team, I'll go back and see 'Serpents' again to give it another view.

This film was not what I expected. And I mean that in the most positive way possible. What I expected was another rehashing of the Colombian drug cartel wars / gun fights / Pablo Escobar type stuff, and while there is certainly some of that here, the film is so much more than that.

This film takes you to a remote and little known corner of northern Colombia and immediately immerses you in the local culture. I hope this is not a spoiler but I was left speechless by the simple fact that Spanish is not actually the language being spoken in most of the film - instead it's the regional native dialect of the tribes-people that the film follows. Being completely foreign to Colombia, this was all new and fascinating to me. The film does a wonderful job portraying these proud people and their culture, and how the larger Colombian "drug" culture seeps in with its temptations of money and power. The lesson of what happens when those two mix is a timeless one.

The landscapes of the film are stunning, and I particularly appreciated the cinematography. But perhaps my favourite thing about the film was it's heavy use of spirituality and what I can only describe as "magical realism" transposed into film. I thought it was brilliantly done.

This is one of my favourite films I've seen this year, hands down.