The Clay Bird

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Audience Member One of the best Bangladeshi movies. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 02/15/23 Full Review Audience Member Classic in Bengali film history. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/15/23 Full Review Audience Member It's good to see indigenous Bangladeshi cinema that tells a largely straight story. This has some performance interwoven, but is mainly the tale of a small boy sent to a madrassa school, told against a highly charged political and historical backdrop. Masud, the director, is a Muslim in a Muslim society, and clearly has little time for extreme orthodox observance. His implicit critique of his own society, produced for a home audience is powerful and effective. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/14/23 Full Review Audience Member Does exceptionally well portraying the struggle of one boy in understand his father's religious devotion which ultimately brings sadness to his family. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/06/23 Full Review Audience Member The Clay Bird, an examination of Islam as seen through a child's eyes in the midst of Bangladesh's violent formation, is too muddled to be truly effective. It's hard to follow the historical thrust of the story, and the various cultures, religions, and political movements aren't clearly delineated for outsiders. It's hard to imagine really appreciating the movie without being deeply invested in Bengali history. Still, the film features some touching moments, great performances from its young actors, and features some interesting insight that isn't fleshed-out or balanced enough to warrant much deliberation, but still provides a glimpse of a different, sometimes disturbing, way of life. Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 01/27/23 Full Review Audience Member The film tries to talk about a lot of elementary issues in Bangladesh - religion, revolution, education, superstition and so on. We find a dash of everything although all of them are dealt superficially. The film thus becomes mildly propagandistic. Perhaps it was a conscious compromise that Tareque Masud made for the sake of introducing the rainbow of Bangladesh infront of the world, the west basically, considering the fact that this was the first film (remains the only one till date) from Bangladesh to receive an Oscar nomination. There will always remain an oppertunity to dig deeper into those seperate ideas from here on. The songs in the film are quite strong in lyrics which renders the film a radical edge that compliments the progress and the plot of the film beautifully. Although, the direction appears a bit amateur at times, Masud had occationally used some powerful shots to prove his mettle, like the scene where Anu goes to feed Rokon his medicines in the room where Rokon is locked but Rokon does not recognise him. He stares blankly at Anu for a minute and then averts his gaze to keep looking at nothing. The light from the lone candle glows on, in between them. That was one haunting scene. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/17/23 Full Review Read all reviews

The Clay Bird

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