Birdsong (Amariz, 2025)
Warning: This review may be considered to contain plot spoilers.
Birdsong is hard movie to recommend even though the part of me that naturally roots for new talent wants to in spite of its one major shortcoming.
That weakness is that I am not convinced it is possible to ferret out what is going on in the screenplay without the press kit or other external materials. Those materials make the story’s meaning clearer, earlier. But will the average viewer read up on a film like this one before screening it? Conversely, will those who are most apt to appreciate it resent having the film’s largest potential pleasure — that of figuring it out on one’s own — spoiled in advance?
Typically, when film reviews talk about spoilers, they refer to plot incidents that happen near the end of a film and that materially impact the audience’s understanding of what has gone on before. The best twists are ones the audience may not see coming but which also don’t contradict what has gone before. There are some films where the spoiler isn’t about a twist so much as it is clarifying the ambiguity of what has happened. It is the difference between Psycho and Vertigo. In the former, something unexpected happens. In the latter, the meaning of what has happened is clarified through the introduction of a part of the story that has been omitted or hidden.
If you are still reading and don’t like the latter kind of film being spoiled, I urge you to stop reading here until after you’ve screened the film (if you intend to). The titular character, Bird (Chloë Levine), is trapped in an apartment that mysteriously and supernaturally supplies all her needs. Seemingly ageless so long as she is in the apartment, her existence is one of alienation and loneliness. When she is visited by Silesia (Rebecca Knox), she is presented with an opportunity to escape her prison, but only if she betrays her newly found love and leaves another in her place.
How you feel about spoilers may depend on where you think the dramatic force of the film lies. Director and co-creator Renso Amariz states: “I wanted to explore my past experiences in relationships through the lens of that heartbreak. The pain felt when she left, the isolation, and the ugly, imperfect process of healing.” In contrast, the film’s producer Morgan Bentz says: ““I’ll never forget the first time I read the Birdsong script. No spoilers, but there was an oh shit moment for me. Fast flashes of cinematic fun flew through my mind: what is going on, how will this fragile character handle it, and how delightfully, deceptively playful this story could be on screen.”
The problem with these two quotes is that one of the creators is apparently looking at the narrative in strictly metaphorical terms. The story is a vehicle to defamiliarize and explore feelings about life and relationships. To the other, the story is important enough to protect, the events meaningful in and of themselves. Either position is defensible, but the films like this play better if everyone is on the same page creatively. When a film’s promotional material announces its plot interpretation, it is hard to escape the conclusion that maybe everyone wasn’t rowing in the same direction.
That’s a shame because Levine is quite good and Reyna Hope’s cinematography elevates what could otherwise be a drab, static, single-location shoot.
The press materials also name-drop Keats quite a bit, which was honestly what got me to watch. But understanding that the inspiration is from elements of the poet’s life rather than the poems themselves complicates the chapter titles in ways that felt a little lazy to me.
I won’t say that I hated what Birdsong was trying to do. And at a taut ninety-five minutes, it kept me engaged. I will say that I would have welcomed the opportunity to experience the film without being told in advance what was going to happen and what it meant. When that happens, I typically infer either a lack of confidence on the writer’s part or a lack of conviction from some vested party that the film is capable of standing on its own without mediation.
