BIRDS OF PASSAGE – Review

Rapayet (Jose Acosta) and Zaida (Natalia Reyes) in BIRDS OF PASSAGE. Photo by Mateo Contreras. © Ciudad Lunar / Blond Indian

From the makers of the Oscar-nominated EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT, comes BIRDS OF PASSAGE (Pajaros De Verano), another powerful, innovative exploration of Colombian history told in an unexpected way. The 2016 Oscar-nominated EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT took us on a gorgeous but surreal trip up a Colombian river and through the history of European contact’s impact on indigenous peoples.

This time, that film’s director Ciro Guerra co-directs with producer (and then-wife) Cristina Gallego, while her brother David Gallego returns to provide this new film’s strikingly beautiful cinematography, as he did for EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT. The filmmakers again chose as their subject the impact of outsiders on indigenous peoples of Colombia, basing both films on actual historical sources. But this time it is not the devastating impact of European and American explorers, adventurers and missionaries on indigenous peoples but the origin of the Colombian drug trade. Again, the history is told in an unexpected way, through the experience of one indigenous family in the Guajiro region in northern Colombia. BIRDS OF PASSAGE unfolds as a sweeping, true story-inspired, mythic epic.

While EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT used a surreal, time-bending approach, BIRDS OF PASSAGE takes a more linear one, although still told in a visually striking, lyrical way. Despite being made under difficult personal circumstances (the co-directors divorced during the making of the film), BIRDS OF PASSAGE is an excellent film. It was Colombia’s official submission for the Foreign-Language Oscar, and played at the 2018 Cannes, Toronto, Telluride, Sundance and London film festivals.

BIRDS OF PASSAGE spins a tale of the rise and fall of an indigenous family committed to preserving their traditional beliefs, who are swept up in a pursuit of wealth that chips away at the very traditions they hold dear. It is a story of ambition, greed, and tragedy, set against the onslaught of relentless change.

The film was inspired by a true story, ranging from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, centered on one family of the Wayuu indigenous people.

Rapayet (Jose Acosta) is a young man from a once-great Wayuu family who were mostly wiped out. Raised apart from the traditional life, he is regarded as an outsider for his dealings with non-Wayuu people by the insular indigenous culture, for whom family, tradition and honor are everything. Yet Rapayet is determined to rejoin his family’s village culture.

With the help of a traditional Wayuu mediator, Peregrino (Jose Vicente Cotes), Rapayet asks to marry Zaida (Natalia Reyes), the daughter of the village matriarch Ursula (Carmina Martinez). His proposal is regarded coolly, despite Peregrino’s assurances that Rapayet’s dealings with outsiders increase his prospects for wealth. Unconvinced, Ursula demands a high bride-price (which the film calls a dowry), which sends the young man scrambling to come up with the money.

It is not cocaine but marijuana that launches Colombia on this drug path. Struggling to raise money, Rapayet and his non-Wayuu best friend Moises (John Narvaez), along with one of Rapayet’s few remaining Wayuu relatives, coffee plantation owner Anibal (Juan Bautista Martinez), fall into a scheme to provide marijuana to an American. The decision sets Rapayet on the path to both wealth and imperils his adherence to the traditional life.

Zaida and Ursula’s light-colored skin and the blonde hair of Zaida’s younger brother Leonidas (played as a child by Yanker Diaz and as a teen by Greider Mesa) indicate that the Wayuu have not always lived as apart from the world as their behavior suggests.

The crime family saga might bring to mind THE GODFATHER but the story also evokes Greek tragedy. This film uses an allegorical setting and symbolism, keeping it tied to epic tales and the characters’ indigenous belief system.

While EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT was distinctly surreal and employed a time-bending approach, BIRDS OF PASSAGE takes a more straight-forward one, a single chronological tale, framed as an elder recounting memories, as a cautionary tale to future generations. The device of an old man telling a tale evokes legends, traditional storytelling, and family sagas, but also Greek tragedy and myth. The story is divided into chapters, which are labeled “songs” and given titles suggesting moral theme of these portions in the family’s rise and fall.

The film is well-structured and paced by its co-directors. The cast does an excellent job, particularly Jose Acosta as the conflicted protagonist Rapayet and Carmina Martinez as the fierce matriarch Ursula. The tale gives insight on this pivotal time in Colombian history as well as into its Guajiro setting, taking us inside the relationship between the Wayuu and non-indigenous cultures in the region. It offers an inside view of a culture being eroded by outside forces despite its determination to hold on to traditional life.

Symbolism abounds, as do searing human emotions, as the protagonist is torn between difficult, conflicting choices. Birds are indeed part of the story, serving as omens or as the embodiment of spirits, again echoing mythology. The film’s tone is perfect, and supplemented well by striking visuals, as it focuses on the family’s struggle to adhere to their traditional beliefs.

The visual settings are often starkly beautiful, with the Wayuu village seeming to exist in isolation on a wind-swept, dry plane that emphasizes it’s insular nature. Use of vibrant color in costumes contrasts with backgrounds nearly devoid of it. Other landscapes include the equally-windswept shoreline, and the green, high-mountain locale where Anibal has his coffee plantation.

BIRDS OF PASSAGE is a emotionally-gripping, visually-lush tale of Colombia history told as epic. It combines elements of Greek tragedy and crime family sagas where honor, vengeance and codes of conduct dominate, along with a human personal tale of longing to belong. The epic sweep of the story, spanning more that a decade, and the themes of omens and moral choices, brings to mind legends but the protagonist’s personal tale has a timeless, universal resonance.

BIRDS OF PASSAGE, in Spanish and Wayuu Guajiro language with English subtitles, opens Friday, March 15, at Landmarks’ Plaza Frontenac Cinema.

RATING: 4 1/2 out of 5 stars