Ciro Guerra on the set with Cristina Gallego
Cristina Gallego
BIRDS OF PASSAGE
(Pájaros de verano) B-
Colombia Mexico
Denmark (125 mi) 2018 ‘Scope d:
Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego
Returning to the
same territory where he filmed THE WIND JOURNEYS (2009), this is a film that
attempts to straddle two worlds, struggling to remain faithful to the Wayúu
Nation, an indigenous Indian tribe living autonomously in the northern desert
province of Guajira, Columbia, using an oral history along with a tradition of
recognizing the significance of signs and symbols from dreams as being sacred
and truthful, able to decipher omens and superstitions, yet it also adheres to
conventional Western traditions when it comes to storytelling, creating an
endlessly gloomy succession of acts of revenge, becoming idiotic and monotonous
after a while, as the reprehensible acts giving rise to these events border on
sheer stupidity. That makes it difficult
to understand all the praise heaped upon this film, made by the same director
who created the enticingly original black and white film, 2015
Top Ten List #8 Embrace of the Serpent (El abrazo de la serpiente), yet
this film lacks the unique vision and power of his earlier work. Borrowing from Western models of bloody
gangland retribution undermines what could otherwise be a markedly poetic
attempt to express an indigenous culture strictly in their own terms. By introducing the Narco drug trade into
their remote and isolated communities, the film recreates metaphorically what
actually happened from the 1960’s to the 80’s in rural farmlands across
Colombia, as families turned against families due to the influx of huge sums of
cash, creating a distorted imbalance to their natural world, with the film
suggesting the drug trade literally destroyed indigenous communities that had
survived for centuries, fending off Spanish Conquistadors, the British Navy,
waves of pirates, and various Colombian governments trying to control
them. Yet in a few short decades they
were wiped off the map, gone, but not forgotten, as the filmmakers attempt to
pay tribute to their lives. In
revisiting the ghosts of the past, this allegorical film resembles the African
filmmaking of Sembène’s CEDDO (1977), Cissé’s YELEEN (1987), or Sissako’s Timbuktu
(2014), especially the tribes living in the vast emptiness of the desert,
dressed in colorful flowing robes, where the attainment of goats and cows
provides family status and wealth, with a tradition of “word messengers” acting
as good will ambassadors between tribes, men and women who come and go in
peace, resembling the African tradition of griots, oral storytellers who
recount the rich history of each tribe, passing on knowledge to each new
generation.
Shot in bright,
saturated colors by David Gallego in 35mm, mostly in natural light, the film
starts innocently enough with a vividly ritualistic dance ceremony, featuring
Natalia Reyes as Zaida in a blazing red dress with extended sleeves, announcing
her entry into womanhood, daughter of the tribe’s powerful matriarch Úrsula
Pushaima (Carmiña Martínez), where she is viewed as a coveted prize. Rapayet (José Acosta), from a neighboring
tribe, takes notice, but to win her hand Úrsula demands a king’s ransom to pay
her dowry, 30 goats and 20 cows, far more than any young person could afford,
including the impoverished Rapayet, a coffee producer raised by his uncle
Peregrino (José Vicente Cote), who is a skilled word messenger with a sacred
duty. Undeterred, Rapayet is
enterprising, venturing into a business proposition with the help of a friend,
Moisés (Jhon Narváez), who is something of a loose cannon, yet they run into a
group of Americans who have made their presence felt in the region working with
the Peace Corps, spewing anti-communist rhetoric while in search of local
marijuana (which the film substitutes for cocaine trafficking, leaving out the
leftist guerilla groups and right wing paramilitaries). With the help from his uncle Aníbal (Juan
Bautista Martínez) and his mountaintop farm, a profitable business relationship
is established that will not only pay Zaida’s dowry, but make him the most
powerful drug lord in the region. While
Úrsula views him with suspicion, especially his willingness to deal with alijunas (outsiders), nonetheless she
agrees to the marriage. But the stain of
Western capitalism has been introduced, quickly infiltrating through the ranks,
where the necessity of protective lethal weapons becomes commonplace, with a
cadre of soldiers guarding both Rapayet and Aníbal wherever they go, while
Úrsula builds a gargantuan white palace in the barren emptiness of the desert
landscape, an almost obscene sight, like a fortified bank appearing out of
nowhere, showing signs of corrosion to the family traditions. When Moisés disrupts a deal gone bad,
shooting a couple of Americans, a shockwave of blatant dishonor must be
answered for, yet a corrupting influence is released instead. Perhaps even more inexplicably, Úrsula’s
reprehensible younger son Leonidas (Gredier Meza) turns out to be a sociopathic
menace (as if Scorsese’s Joe Pesci has somehow been transported from the
streets of Brooklyn to the plains of the Wayúu tribe), utterly spoiled,
completely out of control, a drunken misfit used to getting his way who
violates all known moral boundaries. His
toxic influence sends both families into a perpetual gang war from which they
never recover.
While the Wayúu tribe held onto their traditions living in
close-knit tribes, protecting themselves against the encroaching influences of
the outside world, the film offers some insight into the way they collectively
make group decisions, allowing dreams and superstitions to influence their
behavior, believing in ghosts and a communion with the dead, incorporating many
of the aesthetic and ritualistic aspects of their culture, where dreams
seamlessly flow into their existing reality, with the director allowing bits
and pieces of magical realism to creep into the scenes. Significantly, the great grandmother of famed
Colombian author and Nobel prize-winner Gabriel García Márquez was a member of
the Wayúu tribe, where his brilliant and wildly imaginative novel 100 Years of Solitude exposed the world
to this exact same kind of hallucinogenic viewpoint (with the matriarch of the
Buendía family also named Úrsula), where in the blink of an eye another
close-knit family vanishes from the face of the earth. The co-directors Guerra and Gallego, a
married couple who divorced during the production of the film, are themselves
outsiders to this indigenous community, who in fact lead nomadic lives of
extreme economic deprivation, forced to parched desert lands and inhospitable
conditions so precarious that the geographic region is associated with dire
poverty, with thousands of children dying from malnutrition, circumstances this
film completely ignores, instead creating a mythical universe that’s more
acceptable to western audiences. Despite
the best intentions, the film still exploits a culture that has been utterly
marginalized and ignored, where the depiction onscreen is nothing at all like
what they’re used to. Nonetheless, the
film uses a healthy dose of non-professionals in the cast (with 30% of the crew
drawn from the Wayúu tribe), with no single character ever identifiable as the
lead, moving back and forth from one to the other, instead viewed collectively,
much like tribal culture, so outside of the matriarchal power of Carmiña
Martínez as Úrsula (with 30 years of experience in the theater), none of the
other characters have the ability to hold the screen, which contributes to a
certain trance-like flatnesss in the performances that ends up distancing
viewers from the reality of the depicted world.
Told in 5 acts, each identified through a folklore style song structure,
the title curiously comes about fifteen minutes into the film, introducing the
characters in their tribal element ahead of time. With the introduction of tank-sized trucks
armed with machine guns speeding through the desert in a cloud of dust, the
film becomes increasingly violent, growing more and more pessimistic, with some
resembling the walking dead before it’s all over, yet it’s hard not to be
mystified by a grotesque outlandishness in the extreme levels of outrageous
behavior, where despite all initial pledges to honor the family, those promises
are quickly broken in the pursuit of a corrupting power hell-bent on exacting
revenge, even if that means destroying themselves in the process. It’s an unsettling experience, a cautionary
tale that feels more like a Greek tragedy that’s been filtered through a
western genre stylization, a kind of indigenous spaghetti western that goes
spectacularly haywire.
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