In Delhi, birds are falling out of the sky. An apocalyptic picture, definitely, however that is no biblical plague: they’re suffocating on the toxic fumes which have turn into the hallmark of the Indian metropolis as soon as declared probably the most polluted metropolis on the earth. As framed in Shaunak Sen’s placing, award-winning documentary, it takes the work of two eccentric brothers (and former teenage bodybuilders), Mohammed and Nadeem, to assist curb the bird-pocalypse.
The brothers are primarily newbie ornithologists, attempting to stem the lethal tide by working a humble chicken hospital from their tiny, leaky basement. Sen’s movie frames the brothers’ thankless vocation all by superbly composed cinematography, and it’s uncommon {that a} nonfiction movie seems to be this artfully offered. A unprecedented sequence sees the pair retrieve a chicken from near-drowning in a lake, a rescue mission depicted with nearly painterly calm.
Regardless of that weighty setup, Sen finds room for idle, off-guard conversations.
It’s not brief on existential interrogations, both. The huge scale of their activity is ever obvious, and the chicken docs are sometimes philosophical about it. “Delhi is a gaping wound,” says one of many brothers at one level, “and we’re a tiny band support on it.” The specter of nuclear warfare, local weather change, and the nation’s worrying nationalistic leanings are all examined by the lens of those birds; India’s vastly controversial Citizenship Act, the 2019 laws which was overtly discriminatory in direction of Muslims within the eyes of the legislation, looms closely on this Muslim household.
But regardless of that weighty setup, Sen finds room for idle, off-guard conversations, because the countless calls for of the hospital impose home quibbles on household life. There are additionally enthusiastic video games of cricket, and moments of darkish humour. In a single memorable early sequence, a kite nicks one of many brothers’ glasses proper off his face. That Sen chooses to maintain the continued and utter disbelief of the glasses-less brother within the movie reveals an expansive, humane understanding of his material — the far-reaching, and the farcical.
