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Birds, Orphans and Fools

— I, Juraj Jakubisko, a Slovak Director, will tell you about those people, who wanted to be proper tell you how needful it is… And at the same time how futile… To seek rescue from a life that doesn't know love for hate, craziness without true. Over time, appreciating Czech New Wave teaches you never to expect anything predictable from its films. Perhaps for this reason, it sounds redundant to say a film from this movement is “experimental” because such films are inherently so. Still, it’s impossible to discuss Birds, Orphans and Fools without focusing precisely on its overt experimentalism—the deconstruction of any narrative or visual convention. In addition to having a very unique production design, blending the destroyed with the aesthetically pleasing, it also features agile, dynamic, and unconventional editing. That’s what drew me in from the very first minute, with the narration from the director’s perspective on the themes he wanted to address. I have great appreciation for this movement precisely because it showcases the perspective of the young generation of the '60s, born after the war and trying to navigate a world where everything was different. In this case, the dissonance between subjects and themes is addressed at every opportunity. Love and hate, chaos and construction, beauty and ugliness, and, above all, the great struggle between despair and hope for a future with purpose. Madness is the common thread, tying everything together and fulfilling what the director had said right at the beginning. All the characters are lost in their dilemmas, trying to navigate the world and getting lost because of the natural opposition to everything they want. To live and to die. They don’t want to choose. Personally, it had been a while since a film had intrigued and engrossed me like this, to the point of wanting to dissect every scene, symbol, line of dialogue, and meaning. The whole time, my mind was also caught in this tension between just wanting to experience it and wanting to understand every detail. I simply loved this film, and it’s one of those that will stick in my mind for a long time, and I’ll revisit it in the future.