O Ornitólogo

Imagine if Robert Bresson and Walerian Borowczyk were a single person, a synthesis filmmaker. Now imagine that person is gay. Now imagine that person had a fever dream. That dream would be "The Ornithologist". (If you understood that sentence we're soulmates).

If you're in the market for a psycho-sexual erotic biblical parable that flirts with bondage, urination fetish, bestiality, and just good old fashion beautiful men rolling around naked on a beach, but, you know, all done in an artistically austere, under- emphasized way and then hazed into a hallucinatory mist of a story, then this is your jam right here.

What did I think of it?

I thought it was AWESOME!

A staunch queer cinema visionary and nonconformist, Portuguese filmmaker João Pedro Rodrigues' fifth feature beguilingly takes a leap of faith onto a religious theme, a pilgrimage to Saint Anthony of Padua, conspicuously transcribing its story into the existential trials and tribulations of our titular ornithologist Fernando (Hamy), which is also St. Anthony's birth name, stranded in a modern-day Portuguese waterway and forests.

Fernando, an atheist from the word go, embarks on his stork-scouting journey with gusto and alacrity, and the implication that it is not his first sortie in the area makes his adventure quite up his alley. Few background information is purveyed, other than he is under medication and has a male lover who is caring for him. Contrasting Fernando's bird-watching/telescopic angle with different bird's-eye views, it is the modus operandi brings home a numinous frisson of watching and simultaneously being watched, literally sublimates the nature's gaze with a plethora of wild feathered friends hovering around incessantly through the film. When Fernando's kayak is upset during the rapids, the story starts to take shape into a multi-layered religious mythology through Fernando's various real/surreal encounters, garnished with sexual innuendos (undressed and tied- up by two young Chinese female God-bothers, a sadomasochistic position enticing one's fantasy; the urolagnia experience in the darkness among a contingent of masqueraded roarers), and an in- the-buff dalliance with a deaf-mute shepherd boy named Jesus (Cagiao), which ends in manslaughter, a startling incident but concocted with blasé wantonness.

Conceivably, when one liquidates Jesus, there is nothing but a road to redemption beckons him, Fernando must carry on his mythical transmogrification into a pious St. Antony by dint of his self- inflicted ritual for absolution (that is where symbolic tunnel, tableaux vivants and inscrutable gestures abound), consummated by being dispatched by the alter ego of Jesus, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, if credits must be given to Rodrigues' wheeze of contemplating a grand mythos within an entrancing temporal sphere, his didactic exegesis is less a merit to be reckoned with.

Leading actor Paul Hamy credibly shoulders on a role which requires boldness and physical exertion, instils his open-faced earthiness into the overlaying mystique and alone-in-the-woods background, which successfully retains Fernando in the cynosure, even when narrative longueur inevitably lurks. Tellingly, the film renders a captivating landscape to those eyes yearning for natural's majestic design, whether it is the picturesque on the surface or the uncanny residing in the deep, also the foley artists (Nuno Carvalho and Martin Delzescaux) ply their own distinctive aural intrusion to that latter effect: eerie, preternatural and strident. In the end of the day, THE ORNITHOLOGIST is another contrived fable trying to mythicize religion in order to elicit a sense of meta-sanctity of our own existence, but the fruition thuddingly slumps between artsy-fartsy and nonplussing, on top of that, where are the storks, anyway?

The distinct individualism of João Pedro Rodrigues' worldview is turned inward via an unflaggingly intriguing poetical riff on the life of St. Anthony of Padua in "The Ornithologist."

While possibly the director's most accessible film to date, calling this visually striking work "accessible" doesn't mean most audiences will fully understand Rodrigues' delightfully meandering paths, nor appreciate his homoerotic, playfully blasphemous modernised hagiography.

Religious conservatives will be as apoplectic as they were with Godard's "Hail Mary," but art-house lovers, including those not always in sync with the "To Die Like a Man" helm-er's style should find much pleasure, even if they're perplexed by what it all means.

Narratively, the film gets even more bizarre. A Latin-speaking Amazon (performance artist Juliane Elting, whose stage moniker pays fantastic tribute to Julian Eltinge) calls Fernando by the name Anthony, and by the time he meets Jesus' identical twin brother, Thomas, actor Hamy has been replaced by director Rodrigues.

Visually, "The Ornithologist" is Rodrigues' most classically shot film, and the first entirely lenses outdoors. Regular collaborator Rui Poças brings out the richness of the forest and river canyon in all its natural splendours, at times almost hinting at a European version of the sylvan spirit of Thai magical realism rather than the lurid spectacle of the director's "The Last Time I Saw Macao." Unsurprisingly given both the title and the director's academic training, avian scenes are lovingly realised and a constant source of wonder.

When I came out of The Ornithologist I was totally perplexed and unsure of what I had just seen. At one point I thought it was a film about one man's descent into madness, at another I thought it was a tale of the mystery and spirituality of nature and the unknown, a film about loneliness and despair, then I thought maybe it was a character study of queerness and male sexuality. For all I know this film could be all of these things or none of them whatsoever.

Because I don't want to spoil anything - and because I can't describe what happens in this film without sounding like a lunatic, I'll say this: the film follows a solitary Ornithologist who gets lost in the forest and the increasingly strange things that happen to him as he tries to find his way home.

Funnily enough, The Ornithologist plays almost like a parody of an art-house film - and like most art-house, this is not a film for everyone. Consider yourself warned. In terms of its structure, the unfolding of its narrative as well as the way it uses images and sounds to unnerve and to hypnotize you - this is either going to infuriate or bewitch viewers. I can happily say that I was completely bewitched. I fell under its spell, it got under my skin in a way that I cannot describe and I couldn't stop thinking about it after I saw it. I am under no illusion that I understand most of what I saw, but watching it I could tell that this is exactly the film that director João Pedro Rodrigues wanted to make - it makes no compromises for anybody.

The Ornithologist is daring and strange - there are so many unanswered questions, and I couldn't possibly explain to you what it's about or what happens without sounding certifiably insane, but I am so fine with that - I was completely mesmerized. Give it a chance; you might hate it with every fiber of your being or you might love it and be as enchanted by it as I was.

The movie is about a bird watcher out on a camping trip doing his thing when his raft boat crashes in the woods forcing him to struggle to get out while some odd things are happening.

It was a pretty awesome adventure, as the The Ornithologist would encounter stranger and stranger things, like two good Christian Chinese girls who wanted to offer him to the evil spirits in the forest and a group of topless girls on horseback in a hunting tribe.

Thought it was cool watching this dude survive his odd wilderness experience, but I must admit, my mind is not as open as I thought as there was a naked man on naked man sex scene that I could not watch. I scene other movies where two dudes kiss and have sex but I don't think I've ever seen two men full frontal naked getting romantic. If it makes me seem unenlightened that I had to keep my head turned the whole time then so be it, cause I had too. It was funny cause the scene walks you into to it very easy but still could not take it.

But I did like the movie. I thought it was a great adventure movie about a guy in the wilderness. Hopefully it has also soften me to men or men love scenes just in case it comes up again.

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