Bird Atlas

A brilliantly executed first act. It hooked me up with interesting characters and a story shrouded in mystery, and I was really curious to see where it was all going and what was behind it. Moreover, the performances are almost all well above-par, and Donutil could easily take home the award for acting. But from the scene in the mountain cottage, or more specifically, from the moment when one character utters a completely unintentional "profanity" (a great example of lazy screenwriting – I almost said "ouch" out loud as it hurt), the film completely stopped working for me and the whole thing seemed to fall apart – thematically, in tone, in the logic of the characters' behaviour and in the performances. Suddenly it's clear what's going on, and the film stops moving forward. What Bird Atlas is ultimately about – and what I obviously don't want to spoil – is an interesting cinematic theme, familiar from the occasional police procedural, but from my point of view they didn’t handle it convincingly. For me it was a disappointment, but in the first act I really thought it was very good. And the scenes with the birds... they seemed like a rather random and shallow joke to make the film more formally special, they simply don’t fit organically with the rest. (23/08/2021)

Le début m’a paru étrange, mais ensuite l’intrigue a évolué en présentant un thème intéressant, lequel ne doit pas être sous-estimé pour de nombreuses raisons. Ça peut sembler incroyable et incompréhensible pour les gens qui vivent dans le bonheur d’un couple – qu’ils soient mariés, fiancés ou autre –, mais comme le fait remarquer Alena Mihulová elle-même, les gens malheureux, naïfs et en manque d’amour ne manquent pas en République tchèque et dans le monde. Ceux-ci se jettent dans la gueule du loup au moindre signe du paradis rêvé, lâchant tout et perdant pied avec la réalité. Olmo Omerzu renforce ici sa réputation de réalisateur original et remarquable qui parvient à impressionner avec chaque nouveau film. En plus, il y met chaque fois son actrice de prédilection, ma chère Eliška Křenková. Et de la même façon que j’aimais l’interlude avec le chien dans Family Film, j’aime l’adorable intermezzo avec les oiseaux. Au moins une statuette aurait pu être remportée ce soir. (05/03/2022)

Olmo Omerzu had a stroke of luck when he cast Miroslav Donutil in the lead role. He shone here with an absolutely precise acting performance. Bird Atlas points to the truly cautionary fact that on the one hand, today's man "enjoys" the conveniences of contemporary civilization while on the other, blindly continuing in their eternal chase after mammon. Money and wealth are becoming the object of worship! With the help of (fittingly symbolic) bird chirping, the filmmakers slip a few pearls of wisdom into the story, most of which we all know well. But the problem is that we never really lived according to them, or perhaps we did not really want to. And perhaps this is the crux of why the film did not appeal to many viewers. (80%) (24/03/2022)