Film Festival 09 - Birdsong
Birdsong
El cant del ocells, Spain 2008, 98m
Director: Albert Serra
Festivals: Cannes (Directors' Fortnight), Toronto, Vancouver, San
Sebastian, London 2008; Rotterdam 2009
The best examples of 'slow cinema' can be at once intimate and
epic. That's certainly true of Albert Serra's spare, magnificent
re-imagining of the nativity. The focus in this version is on the
Magi, bumbling towards Bethlehem for the blessed event, and this
lumpy, weary, all-too-human trio offer a radical, serio-comic
perspective on the age-old story. Although Serra is much more
intent on documenting his three kings' physiognomy and the contours
of the spectacular landscapes in which they find themselves, he
doesn't shirk his representational responsibilities when they
finally reach their goal. At this point Birdsong gracefully accepts
the burden of centuries of Western art and delivers scenes of
appropriate power and wonder, as the film's only music cue ("El
Cant dels Ocells" by Pau Casals) descends like a miracle.
The visual grandeur of Birdsong's crisp black and white photography
makes 'minimalism' quite a misnomer. Even when a given shot simply
records the travellers resting, or bathing, or disappearing into
the horizon and stumbling back in disarray, the compositions are
rich in intrinsic, if subdued, drama, and the situations resound
with no less understated humour. On close inspection, the sparse,
naturalistic soundtrack also reveals the secret signature of
intelligent design. The pace may be stately and hypnotic, but
Serra's defiantly high-concept subject cocks its snook at the
kneejerk criticism that 'nothing happens' in this kind of
film.
"Nobody knows if they were kings, or magicians, we know nothing
about them at all in fact. It was ideal: landscapes and characters
I knew nothing about." - Albert Serra
In Catalan and Hebrew, with English subtitles
