The owls are not what they seem...
This quick and often uncomfortable three minute piece is the third entry in Chris Marker's brief series of documentary short films entitled "Chris Marker's Bestiary". Each entry so far seems to observe a different animal and also absorbs a different tone. Entry #1 was "Bullfight in Okinawa" (the only entry in the series that does not have an IMDb page yet so I suggest someone gets onto that) and it was certainly the darkest of the three that I've seen, turning a simple bullfight into something of a psychologically draining four minute thriller. The 2nd entry, entitled "Cat Listening to Music" took a completely different tonal route and is among the most delightfully peaceful and kindhearted shorts I have ever seen. This third entry is of a completely different style and tone, one of surrealistic madness as Marker scores simple yet cryptic shots of owls with an electronic soundtrack that sounds so weird the film feels less like an experimental short about owls and more like a science fiction film! The atmosphere is heavy in this one, and it made me realize how genuinely weird and cryptic owls are as an animal species. They are sort of like fluffy aliens, which makes me like them even more, or maybe less...I don't exactly know my opinion on owls anymore, life is a confusing allusion anyway so it doesn't matter. So, yeah, this is a strange, surrealist avant garde movie that clocks in at only three minutes and is a pure delight for those willing to adsorb its bizarre stylistic decisions.