By: Henry J. Fromage (Three Beers) –
I feel like The Painted Bird is an elaborate joke on the selection committee for the now-titled Best International Feature Film, being that three of the nine shortlisted films are “saves” by an Award Committee, and those choosing the nominees must watch all nine.
You want to vote for international arthouse features? Welcome to the jungle, motherfucker!
The Painted Bird follows a young Jewish boy on an odyssey through a rural Eastern Europe that still possesses a medieval sensibility, even in a time we learn is mid-WWII. The horrors he witnesses and undergoes compound as he gets ever-closer to the war itself.
A Toast
The Painted Bird is extremely well shot by DP Vladimir Smutny in atmospheric black and white- there’s no scene that’s anything less than engaging, if only for the clear craftsmanship put into it by him and director Vaclav Marhoul. This craftsmanship makes the vicious, practically non-stop horrors of the film more bearable, but it undeniably gets original novelist Jerzy Kosinki’s point across- people everywhere are shit, and no country comes out of a war unscathed by the inhuman horrors it can’t help but perpetrate.
Petr Kotlar as the Boy almost (and maybe) never talks, but his face is as entirely expressive as the film demands, and his coming of age untainted by love or much mercy is writ across it, as all of the cruelty he witnesses and is writ upon him can’t help but beget his own. The rest of the cast is a curious mix of hard-living unrecognized Eastern European faces and completely out of the blue established actors like Udo Kier, Stellan Skarsgard, and even eventually Harvey Keitel and Barry Pepper. None have much dialogue to speak of, and all possess expressively craggy faces themselves, so it works.
Yep, that is indeed Barry Pepper.
Beer Two
Holy fuck is this the platonic ideal of foreboding arthouse films. It’s 169 minutes of unrelenting human and animal savagery depicted in the starkest and most unflinching of manners. It prompted mass walkouts at the Venice Film Festival before debuting to standing ovations elsewhere- it’s one of those films, and only you know if you’re up for this sort of thing.
Beer Three
The film’s easily made its point halfway through, but 168 minutes of the horrors of existence is what we signed up for, and 168 minutes of the horrors of existence are what we’re going to get.
Good luck, titular bird.
Verdict
The Painted Bird is a momentous, staggering work of near total World War II-era bleakness and the gradual corruption of a young soul. I mean all of this in a good way.
The Painted Bird (2020) Drinking Game
Take a Drink: for every new animal friend
Take a Drink: every time something horrific happens to that animal friend
Take a Drink: for every new chapter
Take a Drink: every time that chapter ends badly
Take a Drink: for every shot of fucked up teeth
Do a Shot: when/if something positive ever happens (wait for scenes to end before drinking)
