Author Nadeem Aslam once said in his book “The Wasted Vigil,” “pull a thread here and you’ll find it’s attached to the rest of the world.”
Brimming with post-modern musings, “Until the Birds Return” (“En attendant les hirondelles”) explores modern Algeria with past and present generations coalescing to form three loosely connected stories: a wealthy property developer and his wife, a young woman torn between Arab tradition and her own ambitions, and a neurologist haunted by “wartime wrongdoings.” With these three stories, “Until the Birds Return” attempts to submerge its viewers into the heart of a contemporary Arab society while illustrating the mutuality of human existence.
Making his full-length directorial debut, Algerian director Karim …show more content…
In reality, these narratives closer resemble fragmented moments of the lives of each main character, with each individual story lacking a fulfilling conclusion. With ambivalence and unresolved stories ineffectively driving this film, the audience is left in the dark, fruitlessly pondering about the significance of each unfulfilled arc. With the above in mind, Moussaoui’s film is a 113 minute-long, meandering mess with no payoff to each characters’ postmodern toil within their own …show more content…
As Moussaoui immediately plunges his viewers neck deep into the murky waters of modern Algerian society by hinting at its civil war backdrop and cultural norms, “Until the Birds Return” becomes almost too difficult for any viewer (even someone with average knowledge of Algeria and Algerian culture) to remain invested in this three-act storyline. Although Moussaoui appears to focus on themes of guilt and modernity within a highly-traditional nation, “Until the Birds Return” winds up disengaging its viewers with its incoherent melding of incomplete “vignettes.”
Moussaoui’s underwhelming use of this storytelling technique not only dilutes organicity around narrative development, but he completely jeopardizes the impactful nature of the film’s overall potentially poignant message: how we as humans are in one way or another connected to each other. Consequently, Moussaoui’s message to his viewers never gets the chance to hit home. With underdeveloped characters and no purpose to be found within three loosely connected stories, Moussaoui’s “Until the Birds Return” felt like it was on the verge of being quite interesting, unfortunately, it never felt “complete”—it was missing that connective thread that could have made this a
Brimming with post-modern musings, “Until the Birds Return” (“En attendant les hirondelles”) explores modern Algeria with past and present generations coalescing to form three loosely connected stories: a wealthy property developer and his wife, a young woman torn between Arab tradition and her own ambitions, and a neurologist haunted by “wartime wrongdoings.” With these three stories, “Until the Birds Return” attempts to submerge its viewers into the heart of a contemporary Arab society while illustrating the mutuality of human existence.
Making his full-length directorial debut, Algerian director Karim …show more content…
In reality, these narratives closer resemble fragmented moments of the lives of each main character, with each individual story lacking a fulfilling conclusion. With ambivalence and unresolved stories ineffectively driving this film, the audience is left in the dark, fruitlessly pondering about the significance of each unfulfilled arc. With the above in mind, Moussaoui’s film is a 113 minute-long, meandering mess with no payoff to each characters’ postmodern toil within their own …show more content…
As Moussaoui immediately plunges his viewers neck deep into the murky waters of modern Algerian society by hinting at its civil war backdrop and cultural norms, “Until the Birds Return” becomes almost too difficult for any viewer (even someone with average knowledge of Algeria and Algerian culture) to remain invested in this three-act storyline. Although Moussaoui appears to focus on themes of guilt and modernity within a highly-traditional nation, “Until the Birds Return” winds up disengaging its viewers with its incoherent melding of incomplete “vignettes.”
Moussaoui’s underwhelming use of this storytelling technique not only dilutes organicity around narrative development, but he completely jeopardizes the impactful nature of the film’s overall potentially poignant message: how we as humans are in one way or another connected to each other. Consequently, Moussaoui’s message to his viewers never gets the chance to hit home. With underdeveloped characters and no purpose to be found within three loosely connected stories, Moussaoui’s “Until the Birds Return” felt like it was on the verge of being quite interesting, unfortunately, it never felt “complete”—it was missing that connective thread that could have made this a