Feathers (Omar El Zohairy, 2021) (Patreon)

Based on the little bit I'd read about Feathers (the 2021 Cannes Critics' Week winner), I expected a comedy. And I suppose an argument could be made for Feathers as a pitch-black comedic enterprise, if you've got a cruel sense of humor. It's committed to a bitter absurdism, introducing the suggestion of magic and/or the supernatural to induce a slow, grinding, Kafkaesque nightmare. If Herzog hadn't already used the title Every Man for Himself and God Against All, it would fit El Zohairy's debut quite well. Like the best films of Buñuel, Feathers turns on an utterly bizarre premise, commits to it absolutely, and displays with brutal realism what would probably happen if said premise came to pass.

In other words, a world in which a single cheap party trick irreversibly upends one's existence is far worse than a world with no magic at all. Feathers is about a poor factory worker (Samy Bassioun), his beleaguered wife (Demyana Nassar), and their three young sons. We never find out what the factory makes, but it is a hideous smokestack industry that billows exhaust into the family's windows several times a day. The message is clear; these people cannot breathe, and the patriarch is more than happy to take his frustrations out on the woman he married. 

Early in the film, the dad throws a cheap-looking birthday party for his oldest son. It's obviously more than he can afford, but he is hoping to impress his boss and workmates. In the midst of the celebration, a magician (whom no one remember actually hiring) gets the father to volunteer for a cabinet trick. He turns the man into a chicken, but can't seem to turn him back. Days turn into weeks, and the family struggles to survive, all the while caring for the chicken who, of course, might be the head of household.

What is interesting about Feathers is El Zohairy's decision to depict exactly what would happen if the breadwinner suddenly evaporated. Aside from having a clucking new houseguest who they stubbornly refuse to eat, the results are the same as if the dad had, as they say, "gone out for cigarettes." The mother tries and fails to secure a number of humiliating jobs. They are hounded for overdue rent. And when the mother seeks help from a neighbor, he expects her to repay him with sexual favors. Within this almost Tarkovskian hellscape, magic only moves in one direction. And when, near the film's conclusion, the father suddenly reappears, things scarcely improve. Neither the family nor the viewer will ever know for sure whether or not he was sent somewhere even worse than home. (He resembles Twin Peaks' ghoulish "gotta light?" man.) Then again, it's possible he simply flew the coop.