On the poster of "Migratory Birds", a man with a gun is wrapped in a red cloth with his head. The blood red was blown by the wind, and the skirt corners were raised like a woman, rippling in the air. The man's face was sunken, like a skeleton hiding behind a red cloth, waiting alone.
As a new work by Ciro Guerra, director of "Snake's Embrace", "Migratory Birds" is located in the desert of northern Colombia. Unlike the water and jungle in the previous film, this movie seems to set off a sandstorm in the theater. The film is divided into five chapters: Weeds, Tombs, Prosperity, War, Edge of Hell. From the inside, the film evokes the attitude of repelling foreigners and tells the dignity and traditions of the Wayu people by explaining the wayu people’s marriage and the concept of family treatment; from the outside, it tells the protagonist Rafa like "Once Upon a Time in America". The personal changes after Ye and his friend Moise started the marijuana business. Lafayette is conservative and cautious, and Moise is arrogant. Immediately afterwards, the arrogant picked up a pistol, stained with the blood of an American business partner and Lafayette's cousin. Lafayette had to follow the advice of the family and shot and killed his friend. On the other side, the younger brother of Rafaye’s wife Zaida has repeatedly defiled the daughters of foreigners, causing wars between the two ethnic groups.
At the beginning of the film, Zaida welcomes the coming-of-age ceremony after a year of retreat. In the circle surrounded by the crowd, Zaida wore a red dress and lifted up the dust with bare feet. She chased the man who challenged, and the man kept backing up under him. The red skirt corners that are being lifted by the wind at this time are like the screenwriter who is wearing a red dress and dancing with ideas in "The Filmmaker".
Continuing the core of the upper work, Zaida can talk to Dream in the film. Zaida once dreamed of her husband appearing with her dead cousin. The heads of the two were covered by cloth. The difference from the poster is that at this time, one person's head covering turns white. If it was said that it symbolized blood and war before, then the whiteness at this time is the respite after the war, or called it, the tranquility of the dead. In the next dream, Zaida dreamed that he was falling, and this fall was the fable of his family, proclaimed like the water of the ayahuasca.
In "Snake's Embrace", the director awakens the entire forest through the image of a snake. The winding river is also the body of a snake. Then, the snake, which symbolizes the civilization of the entire Amazon basin, was eaten by leopards, implying the collision between tradition and foreign civilization, and even death. Similarly, in "Migratory Birds", after Lafayette shot and killed his friend Moise, he kept seeing a bird with slender leg bones in the room. When its slender toes touch the carpet, one can guess the slenderness and arrogance of its upper body. Just like the self-esteem of the Wayu, once the tradition is broken, hatred and disaster will follow.
The fable of Zaida's mother appears many times in the film. Different birds represent different allegories, like a prophet who talks with dreams, controls the evil spirit beads, and can pray for the protection of the gods. But it is the representative of this tradition who used violence to retrieve the family members who had fled after her daughter's family fled, and tied him around like a prisoner. When the Avengers came, the family was shattered, leaving only himself and the granddaughter who became a shepherd in the back.
On the basis of the previous work, many movie viewers have certain aesthetic expectations for the content and even the narrative structure of the film. But this film does not actually have the so-called space-time relationship. Leaving the shepherd at the beginning and end, the film can be described as a linear narrative. Therefore, on the basis of these two, it is easy to lead to the story orientation of the "family history of drug lords", and this orientation often leads viewers to the field of commercial films. Secondly, in the soundtrack of this film, there are more high-quality sounds from the society. In instrumental music, the director chose a unique way of playing in this region. When the instrumental music is sounded, you can feel the vibration of the entire auditorium. It reached both ears like a whistle, and it was as long as Tao Xun. This incompatible but outstanding musical instrument, standing in the entire desert, seems to be the undead playing and watching the human history of the entire desert as a bystander. Similarly, in the film, Lafayette is also the owner of this feature. He kept facing choices. The family is still a foreigner, staying or fleeing. Gradually, the character of Lafayette evolved into a specific image. He is different from the superstitious mother-in-law, conservative and tough. At the same time, he is different from his own friend's radical and arrogant. From beginning to end, he always appeared as a middleman. Create opportunities to resolve conflicts. This may also be the director's neutrality towards the original and the future. At the end, the Avengers sought him out, wanting to know the whereabouts of Zaida's brother. Lafayette expressed his attitude for the last time, and then fell to the ground with gunfire. Of course, the bird still followed him before he died.
In a sense, the story of the film merges with the singing of the shepherd, unfolds in the singing, and ends in the singing. The story in the shepherd’s song comes from the little girl who does not belong to any ethnic group and has no faith, who is the only surviving offspring of this family. In this land full of summer, weeds continue to grow and ethnic groups continue to multiply. It seems that the situation is getting more and more prosperous, but it will not reach the locust storm that flies from time to time. In the yellow sand, they swallowed the water, soil and residents of this area like a tornado. But after all, there is no deadly place. When the screen was dark, the sound of endless rain rang in my ears. This is like the director's thinking about the future and tradition, destruction, subversion, death, and even rebirth. History is presented in the singing of the shepherds, as if the summer wind is blown away.
(Published in the original text: Watching a movie and seeing death)
View more about Birds of Passage reviews
