Bird Box, Susanne Bier 2018 ENG

Bird Box, Susanne Bier 2018

By: Erreh Svaia

Caprine Dispersion

Bird Box is a Netflix production starring the great actress Sandra Bullock and directed by Danish Susanne Bier, director best known for her art and drama films such as In a Better World, in Bird Box, Bier is somewhat similar to Melancholia , that famous apocalyptic film by the also Danish Lars Von Trier (with whom she sometimes shares a production company), about the end of the world due to the impact of a huge meteor, and like the tremendous Von Trier, Bier takes advantage of the film not only to print the usual drama and suspense of this type of films, but also to print a good dose of existentialism that allows Bird Box to become a different film, with a monumental Sandra Bullock carrying the main weight of the film (almost as she did in Alfonso Cuarón´s Gravity), accompanied by a remarkable group of actors beginning with the great John Malcovich, Bullock keeps reminding me sometimes of a Tom Hanks, for her notorious evolution since from simple romantic comedy until her consecration as first actress in powerful dramas, in addition to a Nicolas Cage in her prolific participation in a large number of tapes of different styles at the end, without compromising her integrity as an actress.

Bird Box is an apocalyptic themed film that very superficially approaches many films that I have enjoyed and that seem to carry a similar narrative, Blind Fury, Daredevil, I Am Legend, Children of the Men, The Road, The Happening, Blindness and Melancholia, a hero who can´t see and the end of the world, variables that prevail one or the other in all these movies, of I Am Legend, comes to mind the scenes of Will Smith taking refuge in his bathtub at night to listen as hell unleashes in the streets, Blind Fury and The Daredevil, blindness as a skill or virtue, Blindness, in addition to obviously blindness, an apocalyptic event worldwide, The Road and Children of the Men, the forced adult to take responsibility for a child in a violent post-apocalyptic scenario and The Happening, the invisible threat that destroys humanity in the middle of a terrible pandemic of suicides, draws my attention that the "invisible threat" of The Happening by M Night Shyamalan is treated perfectly by Bier, getting to give him the credibility and sense of terror that Shyamalan could not, in many ways Bird Box is probably what The Happening only aspire to be.

In Bird Box we see two narrative lines, in the first one, as a kind of supernatural force is unleashed that begins to lead humans to mass suicide causing a worldwide collapse, the conclusion reached by the survivors is that they should not see outside to avoid being infected by the suicidal impulse, a group of these meet in a house to try to survive, get food and protect themselves from the outside, discovering that the birds (referred to in the title) help them identify who is already infected with the lethal affection, the second narrative line shows us Bullock, pregnant with from a one night relationship, and in the end must also take care of the newborn of another of the survivors, the affective relationship that initially rejects and that is going to establish with another of the survivors and that shows the way to assume its role as "mother", finally, in parallel we see Bullock leading to the two infants already five years old through a river, all this blindly in a real tortuous spectacle that recalls the cosmic anguish that the Bullock could project in Gravity.

Bird Box is a difficult, distressing film, which could somehow be a metaphor for the anger that is currently experienced worldwide, the rejection of social networks to avoid the "contagion" of the fury, but on the other hand there is the element human being to be a mother, to go beyond certain impulses to assume a responsibility not only our own, sometimes also for our fellow human beings, in the end, it seems that "blindness" becomes a virtue that ends up saving us from the horrors of the world, probably Luis Buñuel, the legendary Spanish film director would not agree, but again, in the end, the force with which Bier directs and with which Bullock acts, in an undoubted cinematographic triumph, is imposed