Fest Track On Sirk TV Film Review: DEATH OF A YELLOW BIRD [Fantastic Fest - Austin, Texas]
Approaching a notion of real life trauma with a context of empathy and understanding is an interesting balance. Writer/Director Cody Callahan and Actor Ari Mullen (recently as Ice Cream Man in Eli Roth’s film of the same name) came at the story of "Death Of A Yellow Bird" [Horror Competition] from different angles. According to the director’s statement, Callahan lost his mother from breast cancer but ran away and didn’t get to tell her things he want to say or hear her in return. At the same time, Ari Mullen was diagnosed with cancer and was undergoing chemo. In an interesting creative decision, they blended the two traumas of cancer into a ghost story. Ari, as the lead character, returns to his childhood home looking in a way to isolate himself from his wife and daughter. Mullen and Callahan supposedly shot most of the film with only 3 people. Like an earlier film at Naples Film Festival (which received a jury award), "Yellow Bird" is a feat of mood but it is because of Mullen's breathless acting couple with some beautiful framing. What served him well in a different way in "Ice Cream Man" gives him extreme empathy here.
Again it could border on melodrama but the mood and the use of the frame keep that from happening. The structure also is interesting because the character even says he might be hallucinating. He might already be dead and simply figuring out loose ends. He may have been suicidal and yet looking for a way back. The use of a chair and a video camera (VHS) is what really anchors the progression of the film in its storytelling because it accentuates and paces what is being said. The way the mechanics of the other speaks allows for this build. In addition the use of a different form of medium allows the film to accentuate both videotaped elements and memory in real time. It creates a sense of unsettledness because it is a matter of if what we are seeing is in his mind or not. The Yellow Bird itself as a motif gives the film a very practical focus and delivers the trauma. But it is that basis of memory that delivers what the character needs to do. 91%/A-
By Tim Wassberg
