Review by Beatrice On 23-Jun-2023
A good dose of resignation is of fundamental importance for facing the journey of life.
Egypt, industrial area
A man burns, screams.
Inside a dilapidated, miserable house, a family: wife, husband, three small children.
She always keeps her head down, never speaks; he gives her money and orders.
He tells silly stories like the mutation of table cows for fresh milk; he promises the children that one day he will buy a large villa with a pool table.
He has several debts and cannot pay the rent, yet he organizes a birthday party for his 5-year-old son, with banners, decorations, balloons, masks, cakes, and many guests, including two magicians.
He arrives with a gift: a fountain that turns on and off to give a touch of class to the house...
Circus atmosphere and between one magic trick and another, the head of the family is transformed into a chicken.
The problem is irreversibility: a chicken he is and a chicken he remains.
Despite several attempts, everything remains unchanged.
The magician is accused of demonic witchcraft, possession, and fraud.
The wife's problems, freed from her husband's commands, will, however, be determined by the condition of a woman who cannot work in a factory, who has inherited debts from her husband, who has to do humiliating jobs and will face harassment from other men.
A bitter, grotesque, at times humorous, yet tragic and surreal story.
Besides taking care of the children, the woman must look after the chicken that lives on the marital bed where it is fed cereals.
The woman flees from the advances of a man who persecutes her, preferring to clean anywhere—museums, private homes, butcher shops drenched in blood—rather than have a man by her side again.
But fate returns fiercely, and she will make her final decision.
"Feathers comes from a very simple idea I had six years ago,” says the director. "It's the story of a man who turns into a chicken, and it's a very serious matter, not a joke or a conspiracy story. I wanted to portray the difficult life many Egyptian families lead through a parable. My family members, when faced with the absurd, react as if nothing has happened, even though they are all stuck in their situation. And because they are antiheroes, no one cares about them or their problems. I feel very close to their situation, and since I had the idea, I have become completely obsessed with it."
Scenography, music, absolutely surprising supporting actors; setting of the best neorealist cinema with a beginning in Kaurismäkian comedy style.
Anonymity is a decisive choice, driven by the representation of the banality of the everyday lives and realities on the margins.
The surreal and grotesque narrative animated by sarcastic music, like the Egyptian cover of "Love Story," makes the vision an unsettling and disturbing enchantment.
A small great cinematic dream, very original, with a dispersive yet captivating script, elusive yet unequivocal.
The film's goal justifies the distraction, the ramification of events because the means used in telling the everyday beyond the limits of the absurd manages to bring back the focus on the paralyzing effect of the absurd that bursts into a life already compromised with resignation.
What gives tragedy its peculiar upward drive is the rise of the conviction that the world, that life cannot give us any real satisfaction, and that therefore they do not deserve our attachment: this is the tragic spirit, which leads to resignation.
23-Jun-2023 by Beatrice