Birds of Passage has drawn comparisons to The Godfather. While that isn’t wrong, to dwell on the surface similarities is to miss the specifics of this masterful Colombian film. Directed by Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra, Birds of Passage reflects on familiar issues of crime, family, honor and corruption. But it places those themes in the unfamiliar context of backcountry Colombia, where indigenous clans have stubbornly maintained identity and tradition in the face of Spanish conquest followed by two centuries of dubious national governments.
The story begins in the late 1960s with a young woman, Zaida (Natalia Reyes), about to emerge from seclusion in a rite of passage from adolescence to womanhood. Her final lesson is that family is like a hand, each finger a member working together inseparably. Upon leaving the hut where she has been schooled by her mother, the matriarchal Ursula (Carmiña Martínez), Zaida performs a whirling dance. A young man from the community, Rapayet (José Acosta), choses her as his wife. But there is an obstacle: Zaida’s family demands a dowry large in goats and cattle. Rapayet is crestfallen. How will he ever amass such a dowry when his job is carrying sacks of coffee beans to market?
A group of Peace Corps hippies give Rapayet his big idea: marijuana. He knows where it grows on the mountain belonging to the implacable clan leader Aníbal (Juan Bautista). He cuts a deal with the skeptical Aníbal, hauls sacks of weed on a donkey’s back down the mountainside and makes his first sale. The Peace Corps hippies take a moment to tell him, “Say no to communism.” That’s their real mission in Colombia. Rapayet agrees, embracing the free market drug trade about to balloon into an international trafficking ring with assets as large as any Yankee corporation.
But even before the dealing begins, Zaida’s grandmother has a dream of a dead-end road leading to a sea of pain. It’s the first of many omens as the rich tapestry of indigenous tradition frays strand by strand as wealth and status symbols invade their land. First, it’s a shiny new truck, eventually it’s Rapayet’s modernist white mansion rising with stark incongruity from the hard clay against the empty blue sky. The spirits whisper through birds in the brush and murmur in dreams as old codes of family, honor and responsibility gradually crumble under the weight of previously unknown dollars and weaponry. It’s easy to kill thoughtlessly when every stoned fool is waving firearms in the air.
Birds of Passage moves at a graceful pace, its superb editing builds gradual tension framed by gorgeous cinematography.
