ceremony to watch

Kylee 2022-03-09 08:01:27

The Ornithologist is undoubtedly a film with a strong religious overtone. The male protagonist Fernando first entered the forest as an unbelieving bird watcher, and then encountered two Chinese girls who went to worship at Santiago de Compostela Cathedral but got lost. During the conversation, Fernando revealed that he had no faith and did not believe in ghosts and gods, so he was regarded as "evil" and was bound by the two believers at night. Fernando then fled the two believers, met Jesus, who was deaf and mute, and killed him. After that, Fernando entered another world through a deserted tunnel in the forest, completed the transformation to Anthony, and finally met the resurrected Thomas and was killed by him. At the end of the film, Anthony and Thomas appear together in Padova, reuniting with two believers from China they had met before. It can be said that The Ornithologist has done enough on the subject of religion. Whether it is the male protagonist Fernando and the Anthony he later transformed into (Saint Anthony was born as Fernando, later became Saint Anthony of Padua), Jesus by the river, Thomas in the forest (Jesus' brother, also known as Judas), It was the city of Padova (also called Padua) that appeared later, and even the dog that followed the huntress was named Melampus (the dog of the hunter Actaeon in Greek mythology, Actaeon was turned into a stag because he peeked at the goddess Artemis taking a bath - the woman in the movie) The hunters and the hero also saw stags and were eaten by their own dogs). These elements undoubtedly make the audience more convinced that "Ornithologist" is just a religious "god stick" movie.

However, the film's overly religious elements are likely to cause audiences to ignore another protagonist - the telescope. It should not be difficult for the audience to find that the role of the telescope actually runs through the entire movie. From the beginning, the development of the film has been carried out through the telescope from time to time. The telescope itself is, of course, meaningless, but the act of looking through the telescope becomes part of the ritual, which I will discuss - the ritual of seeing. The anthropologist Fiona Bowie wrote in What Rituals Are[1] that the purpose or function of rituals is not necessarily self-evident. This means that the meaning of the ritual is actually largely assigned by the observer. She mentioned that anthropologist Alfred Gell had asked about the symbolism of indigenous rituals in Papua New Guinea during his fieldwork of the Umeda people. For the Umeda, however, ritual is just an act and has no meaning. Similarly, in The Ornithologist, the male protagonist, as a bird watcher, hopes to establish some kind of meaning similar to ritual by observing the behavior of birds. In his view, the erect feathers of birds mean struggle; the birds hovering above mean predation. And this kind of viewing is not only from the male protagonist who is a human, but also from birds (there are many bird gazes in the movie, and the simulated bird's eyes observe the human lens). It is this viewing that forms the basis of ritual meaning. The ritual of watching is also well represented in the scene where the two Chinese girls appear. One is that they photographed plants in the forest through cameras, and the other is that they explained their history through a slideshow photo exhibition in the film. Cameras and photographs, one is the way/medium of viewing, the other is the evidence of viewing, they are all part of the ritual.

But what kind of seeing is the act of seeing, and which is the ritual of seeing? The performance on this question is one of the important reasons why I love The Ornithologist. The first quarter of the film has a natural documentary style. At this time, the actor's viewing of birds, or when we as audiences view the actor's viewing behavior, is only defined as the viewing behavior itself, because It doesn't seem to have any deeper reference. But with the emergence of Chinese girls, the film gradually began to have references to religion. Until the male protagonist finds that his broken boat appears in the ritual remnants of a tribe in the forest, his ID card has been fingerprinted, and his photo has been burned. At this time, the audience may find that some kind of ritual has begun to be established. And the film itself also begins here, entering a kind of viewing ritual. After the hero escaped from the Chinese girls, he watched the ritual process of the tribe through binoculars at night. But also at this moment, the ceremony of watching is completed, which means that subsequent watching, whether it is from the male protagonist as a human, from birds, or from the audience, will point to some deeper meaning.

If the film is only describing a more real world up to this point, the description thereafter begins to point to more mysterious elements. The male protagonist encounters Jesus, makes love with him and kills him, enters a different world through a tunnel, encounters a dove similar to revelation, discards his original identity (abandoned his ID card, mobile phone and medicine, burnt his fingerprints) ), questioned the fish in the sewage, was later shot by a huntress, resurrected, and finally transformed into Anthony, encountered and killed by Thomas. Among them, the viewing of birds (doves and owls) by the male protagonist, the viewing of the male protagonist by the birds, and the viewing of the film by the audience are no longer limited to the viewing behavior itself, but have symbolic meaning. This is also the shrewdness of "The Ornithologist". It not only tells the story of a religious "god stick" from non-belief to returning to faith, it also manipulates how the audience views viewing itself. If the story of the film tells about the establishment of a certain ritual (the ritual of the transformation of the male protagonist), then for the audience, the behavior of watching the film is gradually led to the establishment of the meaning of the watching behavior, which makes watching itself eventually become A ritual of transformation.

[1] Fiona Bowie. An Introduction to Religious Anthropology. Beijing: Renmin University of China Press [M], 2004

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