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CAPSULE: BIRD (2024)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Nukiya Adams, Franz Rogowski,

PLOT: Twelve-year-old Bailey comes of age among a family of social outcasts, feeling like an outsider until she finds hope in her acquaintance  with an enigmatic boy named Bird.

Still from Bird (2024)

COMMENTS:  British cinema has always had a fondness towards the marginalized. Since the late fifties and sixties, kitchen sink realism has put the working class on the foreground. Contemporary movies have portrayed social outcasts, too: in Marxist terms, the sub-proletarians (the poorest of the working class) and lumpenproletarians (a group without class consciousness—criminals, the chronically unemployed—a distinct class below the workers). Andrea Arnold’s most recent feature film tackles the subject of coming-of-age in such an environment while maintaining a lighthearted tone, in a similar vein to Charlotte Regan’s Scrapper (2023).  Both films combine the harshest aspects of reality with a healthy dose of fairy tale magical realism, a merging of styles that seems to be a tendency in contemporary British cinema.

Bird‘s plot revolves around a twelve-year-old Bailey. It is clear from the beginning that she feels like an outsider even in her own family, who are already a band of misfits. Her father plans a wedding with his latest girlfriend, ignoring Bailey’s wants, and her brother is preoccupied with his criminal gang and refuses to include her because she is too young. Feeling lonely and angry with the world, Bailey finds comfort and inspiration in animals. That is, until she meets Bird, an enigmatic young man looking for his own parents.

Bird is a mysterious person with an even more obscure past. He is an angelic figure, always willing to help. He is also a bird trapped in a human body. The way he finds comfort by standing still on top of buildings or walls is uncanny. Every now and then his expressions and movements imitate those of a bird, especially when, in a late choreography of desperation, he turns around like a fowl with broken wings. He is more than he seems, although his origin and true nature remain open to interpretation.

Bird drives the plot, but Bailey is the main character. The camera follows her around in her wandering misadventures, while short flashbacks offer windows into her inner thoughts. Bird is essentially her coming-of-age tale, showcasing landmarks of her physical transformation into a woman—her first period—as well as her mental maturation. Birds and the eponymous boy will play a major role in the latter. Birds are not only symbols of freedom, but become agents of a change; the film has an animistic worldview.

In the end, Bailey finds her place. A joyous conclusion  pays respects to family, however unconventional they seem at first glance. Bird stands out as a unique combination of social and magical realism, but it won’t appeal to hardcore fans of the weird and the bizarre. For those that love their social realism with a touch of poetry, though, it merits a recommendation.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The introduction of surrealism has the ironic effect of breaking the spell that has marked Arnold’s best films… A resolutely realistic filmmaker turning to magical realism has the uncomfortable effect of making the whole movie… feel inauthentic.”–Jake Coyle, AP (contemporaneous)

Bird [Blu-ray]

Bird [Blu-ray]

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CAPSULE: WETIKO (2022)

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DIRECTED BY: Kerry Mondragon

FEATURING: Juandaniel García Treviño, Dalia Xiuhcoatl, Neil Sandilands

PLOT: A Mayan boy delivers hallucinogenic toads to a jungle love cult led by a Western shaman and is sucked into their petty intrigues.

Still from Wetiko (2022)

COMMENTS: It’s all fairly coherent until the moth flies into Aapo’s ear. Zake, sus shaman of the “Empire of Love,” wants to host a ritual trip for a tour group in the Mexican jungle. As an outsider, he can’t legally buy the necessary psychedelic toads, so through his sexy right hand gal Luz he drops a wad of cash to rent the toads and milk their trippy secretions for a night of enlightened debauchery. Teenager Aapo motorbikes into the heart of darkness to deliver the bufo, but through plot contrivances ends up staying there all night, despite his mother’s wise warnings to stay away from the unsanctioned ceremony. The Empire of Love compound is inhabited by  assistant shamans, a cadre of quiet servants all bearing the first name “Maria” (one of Wetiko‘s creepiest ideas), and a cray-cray drug-damaged westerner who seems like he will play an important role in the plot, but quickly disappears. Aapo spends an inordinate amount of time prepping the frogs, since his skill with them may be less than the group requires; then, while touring a sacred cave, he gets the aforementioned moth lodged in his ear. Of course, Zake has him chug a bottle of vile-looking green liquid to expel the bug, and of course, the fluid makes Aapo start trembling, sweating, and seeing montages. Although he will sober up every now and then, the remaining two-thirds of the movie are basically a long psychedelic trip. Although everybody seems pretty high, the actual toad ceremony takes forever to arrive, particularly since everyone continually loses track of the frogs themselves.

A lot of people inside the Empire have their own agendas, but with the distracted and fragmented narrative, we never get a clear sense of where the players stand. Even so, lack of clarity in the plot is not a huge impediment for the movie. But the lack of clarity in character motivation is. Aapo is positioned to go on a vision quest, but his character is so bland and ill-defined that we have no sense of what that might entail, other than, perhaps, his sexual initiation into adulthood. The movie is more concerned with villain Zake, who is suitably Machiavellian but whose schemes and plans are little more than a bundle of anti-colonialist and cult-leader tropes, as nebulous the gobbledygook (“welcome, star beings, to our Empire of Love…”) he uses to manipulate his dupes. Sure, the movie drops hints of sleazy land purchases, sexual exploitation, even murder, but what is Zake’s end game? Aapo supplies the hallucinogenic toads, but why Zake is specifically interested in him beyond providing that simple service is left to your imagination. That’s not to mention all the other people in the cult, some of whom may be playing their own games, but all of whose motives remain a mystery, making their eventual power grabs seem arbitrary. Zake is a baleful influence, sure, but he hardly feels real: he’s more a non-specific, obvious symbol of destructive western exploitation.

The rich opportunity to satirize ethnobotanical tourism—the phenomenon of crunchy rich white people traveling to the jungle to take drugs with native shamans—is barely grasped at. Although not strictly a horror movie, Wetiko fits into the folk horror tradition, the kind of flick that might share space on a disc in 2040’s “All The Haunts Be Ours, Vol. 9.” There’s a scene intended to remind you of the ending of Midsommar, and you might almost be tempted to dub it The Wicker Mayan. What Wetiko lacks in logic it seeks to make up through febrile atmosphere, although the low-budget drug scenes relying on odd camera lenses, echo-y audio, neon lighting, and incoherent editing are nothing you haven’t seen before. What’s more effective is the setting itself, the feeling of being abandoned deep in the jungle with no civilization around to help out if things take a turn for the worst. In fact, the movie is at its best in its sober first act, when everything is new and feels more ominous and portentous than events eventually justify. Wetiko initially seems exotic, but ultimately it’s little more than Aapo getting sucked into a bad trip of colonialist metaphors. I’ll stick with street drugs.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…has the hazy vibes of an acid trip, putting the audience alongside Aapo as he’s drawn deeper into this baffling, dangerous underworld.”–Josh Bell, Crooked Marquee (VOD)

Apocryphally Weird

68*. DREAMS THAT MONEY CAN BUY (1947)

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“Ernst was obviously an astute observer of what qualities go into making an experience oneiric.”—Deirdre Barrett, IASD president

RecommendedWeirdest!

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Jack Bittner

PLOT: Fresh from the bank and owing cash, Joe needs to get some money—fast. A solution hits him for quick green, and soon he’s selling people dreams. Most come to buy (one comes to sell), but the ephemeral business ain’t all swell.

Still from "dreams that money can buy" (1949)

BACKGROUND:

  • One loft apartment, $25,000 (partly supplied by Peggy Guggenheim), three years of filming, and the involvement of some of the contemporary art-world’s heaviest hitters is all it took to create Dreams That Money Can Buy.
  • The film won of the Venice Film Festival’s special award for “Best Original Contribution to the Progress of Cinematography”.
  • At its New York City premiere, Dreams was projected on wall and ceiling of the venue, instead of the screen.
  • , aged 19 at the time, shows up as an extra, securing his place amongst the cool kids of cinema five years before his directorial debut.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: In a feature-length showcase from the avant-garde’s best, choosing just one is an odd request. G. Smalley suggests the scene from Max Ernst’s “Desire” where an elderly butler (Ernst himself) pulls first a shirtless man, then a pallid, corpselike woman in a nightgown out from under the sleeper’s red-velvet curtained canopy bed. It helps that the room is filled with smoke (possibly from an incinerated telephone) and that the sound accompaniment is a trancelike looped recording of men and women chanting backwards.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Bouncy beatnik narrator; escaping out the window with Zeus-bust luggage into death color-drop explosion

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: This dream anthology has pep, humor, surrealism, and cool to spare, all presented in the confines of a brownstone apartment.

Promo trailer for a London screening of Dreams that Money Can Buy (1947)

COMMENTS: It is the intersection of Capitalism and Surrealism. It is Continue reading 68*. DREAMS THAT MONEY CAN BUY (1947) →

Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: MARUTIRTHA HINGLAJ (1959)

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AKA Hinglaj, The Desert Shrine

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DIRECTED BY: Bikash Roy

FEATURING: Uttam Kumar, Sabitri Chatterjee, Anil Chatterjee, Pahari Sanyal, Bikash Roy

PLOT: A young man and woman are rescued in the desert by a group of pilgrims of various castes and faiths. 

Still from MARUTIRTHA HINGLAJ (1959)

COMMENTS: Movies about religion run similar dangers to those from any long-running franchise. Built as they are around a deep canon embraced by a particularly ardent regiment of hardcore fans, the producers must satisfy the expectations of devotees while extending an outreach to any potential converts. It’s hard to be all things to all people, especially when you’re relying on the moral rectitude of the universe.

Marutirtha Hinglaj, however, is not concerned with appealing to the unenlightened, and that’s honestly to the film’s benefit, because we heathens can appreciate the pilgrims’ passion and determination at face value. An understanding of the apparent tolerance between the Hindus and Muslims on the dangerous trek, familiarity with the unique powers of redemption granted by the goddess Durga, and even the finer points of why highborn girls aren’t supposed to run away with street-rat boys are all concerns you can set aside with this movie. Hinglaj is perfectly legible as a study of the human quest for forgiveness and emotional peace, no matter how much turmoil is required to achieve it. Christian travelers to Lourdes or even rock fans making the trip to Jim Morrison’s grave can relate.

The film was based on a popular travelogue of the time, and if we were just following this group as they made their way through the desert, it would be a fairly straightforward accounting of the journey. Director Roy’s major contribution to the narrative is the introduction of the forlorn couple whom the marchers rescue from the wastelands. Thirumal is a poor fortune teller tasked with predicting the future for well-off bride-to-be Kunti. They fall madly in love (the initial transgression) and then elope (compounding the problem), which is when tragedy finds them. Roving bandits attack the couple, robbing them and assaulting Kunti, a crime that they view as punishment for their earlier wrongdoing (a frustrating instance of culturally approved victim-blaming that is probably the most inexplicable belief for a 21st-century audience). It’s a lamentable fate, not least because Roy crafts a charming montage of the illicit pair’s moneymaking ventures on the road, demonstrating their overwhelming charm as he plays music while she dances. Thirumal beams with rapturous love for his wife, but we also start to see his palpable jealousy at onlookers’ attention, which foreshadows the madness that will soon overtake him as he pivots between passion and faith.

It is difficult but essential to understand the moral code on display here. The conditions for the march across the Indian wasteland are maddeningly difficult, but of course the challenge is what ennobles the effort. They have been promised complete forgiveness for their mistakes—some of which are revealed to be quite severe—but the future looks to be as bright as the present is dark. Even Kunti, who believes herself to be unpure as a result of both her actions and the cruelties forced upon her, comes to hope for the deliverance that reaching Hinglaj will bring. By contrast, Thirumal’s mania isn’t because he doesn’t believe in the possibility of healing, but because he’s certain that he doesn’t deserve it. His struggle is balanced by the kindness and sympathy of the traveling company. The weight of this conflict lifts Marutirtha Hinglaj out of the real world and into an elevated plane of moral debate. It’s a little strange to watch these intensely earnest travelers, and when shot against Roy’s dramatic backdrops, which deftly combine imperiously vast locations in the Makran desert with unusually authentic soundstage filming, the whole proceeding takes on a surreal quality.

Marutirtha Hinglaj isn’t out to convert anyone. It’s perfectly acceptable to look at the whole enterprise as proof of the madness of religious belief. Yet there is a beauty in the purity of these travelers’ moral code, and a dramatic correctness in the way that the story metes out an appropriate justice. The film makes a weird gamble on the drama of the mystery of faith, and seems to have earned a nod of approval from the gods.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…I was moved by this film. It may be a bit dated, but there’s so much to think about here, that I will probably be dwelling on this story for some time… it hangs on urgent questions of life and death. The parallel moral journey is thus impossible to dismiss. When belief and devotion play out in extreme survival scenarios, it seems important to take them seriously.” – Miranda, Filmi~Contrast

(This movie was nominated for review by Debasish, who called it “a very existential movie with spiritual and surreal undertones.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.) 

Marutirtha Hinglaj (Brand New Single Disc Dvd,

Marutirtha Hinglaj (Brand New Single Disc Dvd, Bengali Dvd, With English Subtitles, Released By Angel Digital)

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    Capsules

    CAPSULE: MOTHER MARY (2026)

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    DIRECTED BY:

    FEATURING: , Michaela Coel

    PLOT: A pop star seeks out her estranged seamstress to make a new dress for an upcoming performance.

    Still from Mother Mary (2026)

    COMMENTS: Mother Mary is a pop singer known for her elaborate costumes featuring halo-styled headdresses (a motif she may have recently abandoned). Now, I don’t know modern pop music from Tuvan throat singing (not quite true—I own a Hun Huur Tu album—but you get the point).  But I gather Anne Hathaway’s Mother Mary is supposed to be huge, the type of singer whose trysts with NFL stars get featured on TMZ. The Catholic nomenclature obviously recalls megastar Madonna, while her costuming suggests Taylor Swift by way of Bjork. Critics more familiar with this genre than I am often trot out Lady Gaga as an analogue, along with a number of other names that sound vaguely familiar (vague familiarity being the essential currency of popular music). Jack Antonoff, Charli XCX, and FKA Twigs (who also appears in the film and, coincidentally, also has a Mother Mary role under her belt) supply the generic pop soundtrack.

    At any rate, Mother Mary is secretly a wreck. Her last big public performance ended in an embarrassing and concerning platform malfunction, and she’s apparently been in a bit of a slump since. OK, creative crisis, got it. After an unsatisfactory wardrobe session sends her into a crisis of insecurity, she flies off to see her old estranged seamstress, Sam (Coel). What follows is a long sequence of the two women warily circling each other; Sam is not at all happy to see her old friend, but nevertheless passive-aggressively agrees to make her the new dress MM hopes will reignite her creative spark. The film turns into an extended conversation as Sam takes measurements, selects fabrics, and asks her client to do an interpretive dance (without musical accompaniment, because she has sworn a vow to not listen to Mother Mary’s new work). The designer pokes at old resentments, while the idol she helped create desperately (and pathetically) attempts to mend fences. The supernatural twist is divulged about halfway through, but it’s less hauntingly mysterious and more a disappointingly literal metaphor for the women’s shredded relationship. What began as a talky two-hander suddenly turns into In Fabric, but with no humor whatsoever.

    It’s no knock on the two principals, who turn in excellent work, but Mother Mary never really finds anything interesting to say about its subject. The best produced parts are the concert clips—which convey a degree of spectacle that suggests why people might actually flock to see the otherwise vapid Mother Mary—and a few ethereal sequences with a flowing red spirit. But the story itself never approaches the profundity of a good Lana Del Rey single. Pop stars are bland, so maybe, by definition, movies about pop stars should be bland—-even when they try to spice things up with bloody symbolism.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “‘Weird’ is a dismissive adjective for things that people don’t readily understand, or for complex work that wears its idiosyncrasies on its bell sleeve. But the writer-director behind The Green Knight and A Ghost Story has taken the most accessible subject imaginable — stratospheric pop stardom — and made something wonderfully, gloriously weird out of it.”–David Fear, Rolling Stone (contemporaneous)