Migratory birds are frequent visitors of the La Guajira Desert in northern Colombia. During the changing of the four seasons, they passed over the desert, witnessing the good fortune and disaster on the edge of Colombia from the 1960s to the 1980s. When trucks replaced mules and horses, and when cocktail party bands replaced traditional flute sounds, perhaps they were also wondering, after the grave was excavated in the next year, would they drag out bones or guns? Colombian director Ciro Guerra's new film is named "Migratory Birds" and is set in La Guajira. It tells the nourishment and destruction of this desert brought about by the marijuana trade in 20 years.
Ciro Guerra is undoubtedly one of the most watched directors in the Spanish-speaking world in recent years. In 2015, Ciro Guerra's third feature film "Snake's Embrace" received a good response immediately after the director's biweekly premiere. After winning the biweekly, it was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and became the first in Colombian history. Oscar nominated film. It is not surprising that the new film "Migratory Birds" returned as the opening film for the biweekly. The film was co-directed by Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego, who had produced "Snake's Embrace".
The story of "Migratory Birds" takes place in the La Guajira desert in Colombia in 1968. The narrative is divided into 5 chapters in chronological order. The director named them 5 songs: Weeds, Tombs, Prosperity, War, Edge of Hell (Limbo) . In the film, the director spent a lot of space describing the rituals of the Wayuu tribe. The beginning of the film is the coming-of-age ceremony of Zaida, a girl from the Wayuu tribe. She opened her arms, raised her skirts, and danced quickly to the fast-paced music and the cheers of her tribe. Difficult to resist, can only leave the field in shock. It was Rapayet who ended this carnival. He came from the fringe clan of the Wayuu tribe and was not worthy of Zaida's identity and status. Zaida’s mother, through the messenger in the tribe, Rapayet’s uncle, conveyed to Rapayet the conditions for marrying Rapayet: 50 cows, 20 sheep, and 3 necklaces-and the dowry conditions that seemed too harsh at the time were actually a success. This is the source of the massive marijuana trade between Colombia and the United States in the future.
After successfully trading marijuana with the Americans for the first time, Rapayet and his partner Moises sat on a rock in the corner, looking at the hippies dancing in a frenzy of demons not far away. Moises said: "This is where the happiness of the world lies." Rapayet replied coldly: "This is the happiness in their world."
And this is exactly what the film wants to discuss. For these people living in almost isolated northern Colombia, when a cold wind called "modern" hits the hot desert, where will they be engulfed? Directors Guerra and Gallego not only wanted to tell history, but also wanted to explore a new perspective to narrate history, especially the identity of the aborigines in history. In this regard, the intentions of the two directors coincide with last year's new work "Zama", which was also a Spanish film by the Argentine female director Lucrecia Martel (Lucrecia Martel). Cannabis cultivation puts the tribes in the middle of the desert at the center of the drug trade, becoming active and profitable participants; while cars, airplanes, guns, wealth, and power come with them, but they also make the ethnic relations and family they admire. The bond fell into a pool of blood.
Gera and Gallego try to show Wayuu’s unique tribal culture in the film, ranging from weaving techniques and inter-clan "messenger" communication methods to various funeral rituals, customs, myths and legends. These exotic cultural symbols themselves are the film. Brings countless natural visual wonders. However, the black and white images in "Snake's Embrace", which are both true and illusory, are simplified in "Migratory Birds" to a clear reference to reality and dreams. Although it is easier to be approached and understood from the plot, it also loses a lot of stylization. expression. In addition, in "Migratory Birds", the two directors express their intention to move closer to the genre film narrative. Unfortunately, the genre elements and the director's own image characteristics have not been fully integrated, although "Migratory Birds" has been used. The photographer of "Snake's Embrace" David Gallagher, but the overall imbalanced aesthetic style reveals that the two directors were still too hasty to test the genre, and the genre technique restrained the director's personal expression.
Fast dance steps and savage winds can roll up sand and gravel, as can a speeding truck loaded with marijuana and guns. When they built a pure white postmodernist castle in the desert with flat Simmons, Zaida and Rapayet ended up embracing each other in a dilapidated hammock to sleep. Migratory birds and locusts come and go in this desert, just like the people living here.
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