A Saga Entwined in Greed and Destruction

Mafia stories have become so entrenched in our popular culture that it’s sometimes hard to believe in their real-world roots. Watching Birds of Passage, an epic Columbian gangster movie directed by Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra, I frequently recalled the likes of The Godfather, The Sopranos, even Boardwalk Empire, seeing the mafia movie clichés play out and their character types making appearances. However this movie is based in real history, real figures, and a real drug war that consumed the Wayuu clans of northern Columbia for two decades. It’s easier to believe in movie tropes than in their real world progenitors.

But it’s the crossroads of gangster culture and the Wayuu tradition that makes Birds of Passage most compelling and distinct. The way it illustrates how each impacted the other and the lives that became changed and entangled in it is quite enrapturing.

After two Wayuu families unite through marriage, the new young patriarch Rapayet Pushana (José Acosta) enters the lucrative marijuana trade in the late 1960s. Over the subsequent decade he builds a powerful empire and drug cartel, but is frequently torn between honouring Wayuu traditions and expectations in his activities, and succumbing to the methods of his non-Wayuu and white (alijuna) partners. As those both outside and within his organization disrupt his operation leading to gang war, Rapayet, his wife Zaida (Natalia Reyes), his family and adversaries have to contend with what they’ve wrought on their age-old community.

As I said, this movie is very reminiscent of The Godfather and that’s never a negative thing. The family dynamic is similarly interesting and fraught with drama, from mother-in-law Ursula (Carmiña Martinez) rising out of stern traditionalist roots to a place of great influence over the criminal activity, to Leonidas (Greider Meza) evolving from a bratty kid to one of the most unlikable figures I’ve seen in a movie lately -in fact he reminds me most explicitly of the representation of Caligula in I, Claudius. The characters and their power plays are intriguing as Rapayet comes into conflict with his impulsive friend and partner Moisés (Jhon Narváes), and makes deals with the powerful Aníbal Uliana (Juan Bautista), whose own trajectory is charted alongside Rapayet’s. And so it has a lot of the engaging stuff of good crime movies but differs harshly in its outlook.There’s almost no glorifying of gangster culture here. No lavish parties or hedonism; even the excess it does depict, like Rapayet’s mansion in the middle of the desert, is drab, colourless, and mostly empty. Neither Rapayet nor Aníbal is made to look particularly cool in their success and luxury, in fact the life of a drug lord is seen to be almost nothing but chaos. Even in the moments, years of relative stability, there’s an inevitability in the atmosphere of where the kingdom will fall. It’s a nicely refreshing genre subversion, playing out like a classic, almost Shakespearean tragedy.

Acosta is terrific in his performance as the strong yet troubled leader of this enterprise, with ambition and motivation, but ultimately a lack of control. He plays well the anxiety and uncertainty of a man caught up in two worlds often having to answer for discretions against Wayuu customs committed by Moisés and Leonidas most egregiously, but also by himself. And though enriched, he never seems happy. The rest of the cast is very good too, though where the movie falters a little is in its women characters. With the exception of Ursula, none really have much say in the action of the plot, as is the tradition of mob movies unfortunately. Reyes gives a great performance and Zaida is given a subplot where she’s concerned with ominous dreams (where the movies’ cinematography and mood is utterly striking), but she’s otherwise underwritten. Another female character is vital to one of the films’ most crucial developments, but afterwards is somewhat insultingly forgotten about.

The heritage of the Wayuu is on full display in the movie, and against the often barren-looking environment of northern Columbia, it comes across particularly alien and fascinating to English-speaking white westerners like myself. Not only does Wayuu culture fill out the film, but it informs how the story progresses. Those who stray from its historic traditions pay for it, particularly with one strike in the gang war being a violation of taboo that earns the wrath of the other Wayuu tribes. In some ways it is similar to the Italian and Irish codes of American gangster films, but only in narrative purpose, the cultural obligations and laws themselves are unique.

Gallego and Guerra know when to use suggestion in storytelling rather than specification. Certain characters don’t have to be killed on screen for the impact of their death to resonate, certain events need only be alluded to and not brutally shown. Frequently we see the cost, but not the violence. You get the sense that these filmmakers are disgusted by Columbian drug cartels, and Birds of Passage is essentially a cautionary tale. And yet they want to do justice by the Wayuu people, as ashamed of these actions as they are. Some critics have called this film the anti-Narcos, and though I’ve never seen the show I understand the sentiment. Drug trafficking has commonly been portrayed in a pseudo-glamourized light, certainly not endorsed, but never really condemned. The rise and fall of Rapayet’s family and their criminal empire is a lesson in how in the unstable and dangerous business of drug dealing, everyone reaps what they sow.

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