The Metamorphosis of Birds
— “The Metamorphosis of Birds” was shown at the 2020 True/False Film Fest and, for T/F festival films, I’m giving a general reaction to the viewing experience, followed by the film’s description as it appeared on the festival website.
A day after I saw this film I overhead a conversation in which someone said it was their favorite film of the festival. I can only shake my head and say that's proof “there’s something for everyone” at True/False. I didn’t even make it through this mess of story that must have existed in layers hidden to me. Whatever value it has is packed in a film that often looks more like a slide show than a film, and an amateur slide show at that. When there was motion, it often should have been severely edited. I think it may just have been too intimate a tale or too Promethean a telling of the tale. Maybe it was just outside my cultural grasp. Whatever it was, it was wordy and subtitles flew across the screen continuously, to the point that you could miss the visuals entirely, particularly when trying to read white subtitles on white. All I can say is that some people loved it, and I didn't.
Description from the T/F website: “A family preserves its memories in this epistolary love story. While Henrique is away at sea, his lifelong love Beatriz is left at home learning about plants and taking care of their six children. The couple keeps in touch through letters and journal entries recited throughout the film. “Let me die, standing up like the trees,” is whispered from a past note in a red-lit corridor. Beatriz and Henrique’s oldest son, Jacinto, wants to be a bird. We observe the growth, love, and despair of Beatriz, Henrique, and their family via director Catarina Vasconcelos’s beautifully reimagination of this personal and intimate tale, sonically activated by the blossoming of flowers.”
A day after I saw this film I overhead a conversation in which someone said it was their favorite film of the festival. I can only shake my head and say that's proof “there’s something for everyone” at True/False. I didn’t even make it through this mess of story that must have existed in layers hidden to me. Whatever value it has is packed in a film that often looks more like a slide show than a film, and an amateur slide show at that. When there was motion, it often should have been severely edited. I think it may just have been too intimate a tale or too Promethean a telling of the tale. Maybe it was just outside my cultural grasp. Whatever it was, it was wordy and subtitles flew across the screen continuously, to the point that you could miss the visuals entirely, particularly when trying to read white subtitles on white. All I can say is that some people loved it, and I didn't.
Description from the T/F website: “A family preserves its memories in this epistolary love story. While Henrique is away at sea, his lifelong love Beatriz is left at home learning about plants and taking care of their six children. The couple keeps in touch through letters and journal entries recited throughout the film. “Let me die, standing up like the trees,” is whispered from a past note in a red-lit corridor. Beatriz and Henrique’s oldest son, Jacinto, wants to be a bird. We observe the growth, love, and despair of Beatriz, Henrique, and their family via director Catarina Vasconcelos’s beautifully reimagination of this personal and intimate tale, sonically activated by the blossoming of flowers.”
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