The Ornithologist [DVD]

Beautifuly shot, the scenery is stunning, acting was good, it’s a very arty film, a little hard to follow at times, but I enjoyed it all the same.

Interesting and different LGBT thriller, perhaps a little too long but a very engaging and mysterious experience. Give it a try

enjoyed very much, great story and some good filming

Didn’t like the movie at all

Super

It faded into a puddle of dissapointment

Joao Pedro Rodrigues has a kind of genius: his ability to create truly memorable images. There is something so magical about what you actually see in his films, the way images take hold in the mind. The story is both simple and highly ambiguous, starting with the fact that the ornithologist of the title, Fernando, is a reflection of St Anthony of Lisbon, even though at the beginning he seems to be an atheist; he has a lot in common with the medieval saint - his being in poor health, encountering Jesus, being involved in a shipwreck, losing things and then finding them, preaching to fish, all of which relate to the legends surrounding the life of the saint. But these things are also given a subversive treatment, and it takes the form of a journey through a forest to observe birds, many of which we see through his binoculars. He meets two Chinese girls who are both comical and a bit unhinged in their own version of Christianity, tying him up just in his underwear using copious amounts of rope. Fernando certainly looks arresting in this state and the sexual dimension cannot pass unnoticed, both here and in other scenes that tap into fetishism. His encounter with a goatherd later in the film, after his boat is dashed in two in the rapids, is an idyll of exquisite sexual overtones, but like so many other episodes, it spins off in entirely unexpected directions. Fernando is exceptionally well cast, Paul Hamy looking like the harpsichordist Scott Ross - an amazing face, it has to be said, both rugged and gentle. But its the images, of which he is part, that haunt the viewer - I know from previous films by Rodrigues (O Fantasma, Odete) that you can recall them clearly years later, even though this is not achieved in any way through shock tactics as so often used by filmmakers - this is sheer visionary projection.

The handsome Paul Hamy plays Fernando, an avid Ornithologist on a solo camping trip just to get away from his lover. But, after an ordeal that nearly kills him, he begins to witness increasingly- weird happenings, and naturally tries to get out of the now mystical forest. Are these hallucinations, attributed to not taking his [presumably antipsychotic] medication, or supernatural epiphanies heralding an spiritual awakening? Soon, our protagonist begins a major transformation, eventually shedding his concern of returning to the civilization proper.It would be very helpful to know that this film is based on the life of the 13th century Portuguese friar St. Anthony of Lisbon (a contemporary of Francis of Assisi), whose birth given name was “Fernando”, and who is depicted as holding the Christ Child in many paintings as well as being such a masterful orator that he also preached to the fish (both of these themes are also referenced in the movie). He was also commissioned by the Pope to produce a collection of his Sermons for Feast Days (Sermones in Festivitates)- Wikipedia. He died in Padua, Italy in 1231.This latest film from the great visionary director João Pedro Rodrigues, several years after his last feature film, seems puzzling at first glance, but the rewards are great once you do the homework. Here he’s made it clear that naturally-sexual human beings can attain asceticism as much as everyone else. It’s beautifully shot, with minimal dialogue, and in original Portuguese, with optional English or French subs. The Extras have no English subs.