Fernando (Paul Hamy) sets out on a fantastical spiritual journey in João Pedro Rodrigues’s strangely compelling and beautifully photographed film THE ORNITHOLOGIST
THE ORNITHOLOGIST (O ORNITÓLOGO) (João Pedro Rodrigues, 2016)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, June 23
212-924-7771
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João Pedro Rodrigues reimagines the story of Fernando Martins de Bulhões, also known as Anthony of Lisbon and Saint Anthony of Padua, in the utterly bizarre and infectiously weird adventure drama The Ornithologist. Rodrigues, who also dealt with the thirteenth-century priest’s legacy in the 2013 zombie short Morning of Saint Anthony’s Day, puts ornithologist Fernando (Paul Hamy) through a series of tests after his canoe capsizes while he’s on a bird-watching expedition. He is found near death on the shore by a pair of Chinese pilgrims (Han Wen and Chan Suan), walking Camino de Santiago, who decide to do something very odd with him. His Stations of the Cross journey continues as he meets a deaf and mute goatherd (Xelo Cagiao), a group of colorful, masked caretos, and a trio of topless women on horseback (Juliane Elting, Isabelle Puntel, and Flora Bulcao), who in different ways challenge his sexuality and spirituality. Rodrigues (The Last Time I Saw Macao, To Die Like a Man) infuses the wild tale with references to Christianity, paganism, ritual, superstition, and Greek mythology as Fernando’s physical and psychological strength is tested in oddball events that get stranger and stranger until the director, who was already dubbing in Hamy’s Portuguese lines with his own voice, starts switching places with the actor.
When he was younger, Rodrigues had a major interest in ornithology, and he relates that to filmmaking early on. Fernando stops in his canoe and takes out his binoculars to look at a bird soaring above him and follows a black stork protecting its eggs in partially hidden reeds; the director cuts to our view of the bird, comparing the binoculars to the movie camera while also putting us inside Fernando’s head. The dazzling cinematography is by Rodrigues regular Rui Poças; everything was shot on location, with no interiors or studio sets. The stellar art direction and production design is by cowriter and regular Rodrigues collaborator João Rui Guerra da Mata, and the subtly haunting score is by Séverine Ballon. “I have to admit this Fernando, the future Anthony, gradually became infused with my personal story. While he may live inside me, in a way I returned the favor and made myself live inside him,” Rodrigues explains in his poignant director’s statement. “My film is a purposefully transgressive and blasphemous re-appropriation of the saint’s life.” Saint Anthony is the patron saint of lost things; after seeing the film, audiences will be happy that they found it.