By Terry Sherwood
Mental illness, trauma, and even life’s ups and downs that some cannot cope with in this society of entitlement and perceived instant gratification are all fodder for stories. ‘Good Art’ should reflect the times and unfortunately society’s woes and ideals find their way into many a film less thoughtfully handled than the brilliant Broken Bird (2024)
This thoughtfully, arresting film is the feature directorial debut of Joanne Mitchell, which surprisingly had its genesis in 2018 short film by Mitchell and Tracey Sheals. One of keys to the story is the title Broken Bird that figures literally in the opening scene of the picture. The term Broken Bird or Broken Bird syndrome refers to a troubled or emotionally fragile person, especially one suffering the aftereffects of a personal trauma. The person is Sybil Chamberlain, portrayed masterfully by Rebecca Calder. She is a quiet, creative person who enjoys taxidermy and pseudo-intellectual off-beat or beat poetry. Her day job s is in a funeral parlour, as an embalmer with whom she relates to better than the living Sybil is suffering her personal horror of when younger, a car accident that took her entire family. A family that she loved, and a father with whom she seeks approval as some do in their parents. Unable to cope with reality at times, functioning at a high level of intellect, she lives in loneliness, with her art and imagination.
The film also introduces a parallel story of Police Detective Helen (Jessica Yemmi) whose son was killed in an accident after she had an unwilling moment of rage from overwork. Helen cannot function, and spends her days at her office in a daze drinking, thinking, and agonizing over a moment she wants to take back. These characters are on a collision course to necrophile, lost memories, redemption and release but not before some quirky events occur for all.,
The Dominic Brunt screenplay weaves the story of Helen whose trauma is grounded and Sybil who retreats into her imagination. Brilliant moments when Sybil is tending a service for a client’s loved one, at an open casket reveal of the person, the woman launches into a tirade about the deceased being a ‘rotten bastard and glad he is dead.’ Sybil takes this to heart and punches the corpse. The deceased wife gleefully joins in the punch fest leaving the corpse’s face bloodied with due to revenge. The sequences is suddenly skillfully revealed as being Sybil’s imagination when in fact the wife of the deceased handles it in a dignified manner.
Helen battles her worries and tries desperately to find out why her son whose body disappeared from the funeral home needs closure both characters are in search of this type of closure.
The film star is Rebecca Calder as Sybil in a wonderfully quirky with purpose portrait of unstable woman without going over the top. Her wardrobe is a cross between a grown ‘Wednesday’ from Original television series The Addams Family with a look recalling female actor Audrey Tautou in another story about imagination the French film Amelie ( 2001). Calder has jerky movements sometimes and flows almost dancelike steps at other times. She sits upright like a dancer with posture, turns her head quickly reminding me of Elsa Lanchester in Bride of Frankenstein (1935).In that film, Lanchester was given the direction to move birdlike and in fact does a macabre swaying dance with Boris Karloff and Ernest Thesiger.
Broken Bird (2024) proceeds through some deliciously evil and sometimes erotic moments when Sybil does an alluring dance in front of the corpse of a man Mark (Jay Taylor) with whom she thought she was in love and loved her. Sybil dances and gyrates, taking off her panties rubbing them on the corpse’s face. In a fantasy moment, he comes to life again proving the last line of Rolling Stone’s song ‘Start me up’ which is ‘You make a dead man cum”
Reason slips away from both Helen and Sybil in chilling climax of gothic horror, oddly reminisced of Hammer Films when Sybil discovers her happiness and Helen finds something that she never thought possible.
Broken Bird (2024) treads the same formaldehyde-fueled path as The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016) and the overlooked Canadian film Kissed (1996) with Molly Parker as a female Mortuary worker yet it has a unique with well-composed images and a subtle voice all its own. Moments of gore are well-placed and plausible. Warning for animal lovers like me there is a moment of difficult roadkill. Still overall well worth a watch with a cool drink.
Broken Bird screened as part of Frightfest 2024.
BROKEN BIRD will be coming to digital platforms from 20th September
Bloody Flicks 