It was a Saturday night. It was the Greek American Film Festival.  It was in conveniently in the neighborhood at the Museum of the Moving Image.  “Let’s go check out the film,” a friend of mine said. “Even though it’s not something I would want to see because it sounds depressing.”  We knew something was up as we entered the neon white entrance hall of the museum because in large block letters the warning read: “Boy Eating Bird’s Food is for adult audiences as some scenes might be offensive.”   “What do you think?” my friend asked.  “Oh, how offensive can it be,” I replied.  “We’ve seen everything.  What is going to happen? That we see him scouring through garbage cans and eating garbage?”
So we bought the tickets.  We took seats close to the front.  Before the film commenced, however, a stately-looking director/producer type, a representative of the Film Festival no doubt, took the mike and made an announcement.  Something to the tune of, “We would just like to inform you that the film has scenes that might be offensive to some.  If you find you cannot stay for the performance, we will refund your tickets. However, we thought it had artistic merit so we believe in the film and have decided to include it in the festival.”  We made this announcement in both English and Greek, as there were quite a few older, matronly and patronly members in the audience.
“Now I’m intrigued,” my friend said. “I want to see what is so offensive about it.”
And so it began.  An angelic-looking blonde, blue-eyed soprano singer, the protagonist of the film, is seen cleaning the cage of his pet canary.  He shakes the water bottle and adds bird seeds to its feeder which he attaches to the cage, not before he dips his index finger to bring a bit of the bird feed stuck around it in his mouth.  He is then seen traveling to the apartment of some kind of opera coach?/repertoire director who plays the piano on crouches.  He gives an audition first by manually revving up his diaphragm by literally churning a hole with his hand over and over with force to the point that we can hear his abdomen gurgling.  He then proceeds to sing an aria in German, something out of the Psalms asking for God to take pity on him, to hear his cries and his misery, and grant him mercy.  This protagonist, anonymous throughout the film, then collapses in the middle of the audition apparently out of dizziness.  The director/auditioner declines to give him the job because he is looking for someone “more seasoned.”  On his way out he asks him if he wants to have a souvlaki.  The young soprano declines.  Then the auditioner asks him for a favor –to take out the bag of garbage and tie it on the municipal garbage can across the street of where he lives.   This the boy dutifully does, but when the other man disappears behind the second floor balcony of his apartment, he takes the bag home and devours the remains.
Basically, the film “Boy Eating Bird’s Food,” is a pathetic tale of a starving artist.  He lives alone, claustrophobically alone, in a small apartment on the top floor of an apartment building somewhere in Athens, except for his pet canary.  The camera is intensively and chaotically following his every move. Without much dialogue, either external or internal, we are sucked into the psychotic black hole of this character.  We see him getting plunged deeper and deeper into poverty and depravation.  He can’t find a job, either in his artistic field or even as a telemarketer for a communications company.   With no food in the apartment, he resorts to scavenging: figs from the communal lot of the apartment building, stolen tablespoons of sugar from the kitchen of the elderly neighbor downstairs who he keeps an eye on in case he falls, a stray pear.  The only attempt at human connection he accomplishes is to voyeuristically follow a young pretty receptionist at a fancy hotel from the front desk to the Metro station without attempting to say a word.  Here is where the offensive part kicks in.  He goes home and jerks off.  But because he is hungry, you guessed right (just like the matronly Greek woman in the seat behind me did, “Tha deis tha ta fai tora”), he eats his ejaculation. Not that I saw any of it; I was hiding behind my hand.
His situation becomes more desperate when the DEH, the Greek telephone company, shuts off his water supply and he dances (moronically) with the bills on his head.  He must sneak into his old neighbor’s apartment late at night to fill an orange bucket with water to fulfill his daily needs. “Signomi” is the only word he can muster to the old man, who himself lives desperately alone, with an empty fridge except for his medicines.
All the while, he keeps the same ritual of tending to the canary:  cleaning the crap out of the canary’s cage and changing the magazine papers at the bottom, washing out and refilling the water bottle and refilling the bird feeder with whatever he can find—pieces of a hard-boiled egg, the last layer of bird food, etc.
In yet another “kato-strophe” in the Aristotleian sense, he returns to find his belongings in a pile at the foot of the stairs, the cage with the canary on top.  In a fortunate swoop of fate, with nowhere else to go, he lets himself into the elderly neighbor’s bottom floor apartment to find the man fallen to the floor, apparently dead.  So he makes the best of it and moves in, all the while with the dead body of the old man blocking his way from the kitchen to the living room.  In this dire strait, he calls his mother on the old man’s phone. The only thing he can muster is a “Ma ma, mama . . .” and no more.
It was at this point that my friend and I decided to leave.  We both had had enough.  We left the theater where we found another lady and a few others who had left in disgust.
Now, as a lit major, I can understand the subtleties in this movie.  We are not supposed to be seeing it for what it is, but like an allegory, what is stands for.  Everything is a symbol for another symbol in this very cerebral flick.  The protagonist is a symbol for Greece in the economic crisis.  His beautiful canary, a beautiful delicate creature that relies on the kindness of others capable of producing profound song in solitude, is a symbol for him.  The one hope he has for life is that canary; when it dies, he dies.  (Although I didn’t see the end, am I right? Does he get so desperate he eats the canary?)  Here is a psychological portrait of an autistic, self-absorbed vulnerable young man with no support group or network.  The motif of finding mercy at the hands of strangers echoed with the beginning song is played out in this stark artistic tour de force.  It reminded me of Dali’s Chien de Andalous in its disgusting unmasking of the grotesqueties of the subconscience.  But really, is it all necessary?
If we are to accept the premise that art can function as a political tool, then why oh why would you want to showcase this type of dismal portrayal of Greece, especially with so much media backlash from non-Greek forces?  This movie won many awards.  It was arranged for the prime-time viewing slot at 8:30 pm on a Saturday night.  Are we that self-deprecating that we glorify such pathetically sick depictions of the sad state of affairs in our country—to watch a young man slurp up his own cum? As a Greek, I know we are prone to self-flagellation and self-absorption as well as hyperbole.  But please, is it necessary to grovel to such depths to show the world how sick the Greek soul is.  We are supposed to be using film to elevate us out of this desperate situation, which I can argue is not the worst that Greece has seen and it WILL OVERCOME even this, not plunge us deeper into the abyss.  Seriously, Hellenic Chamber of Commerce and the wonderful people who put this line up of films together, NOT a good choice for your average Greek-American movie goer on a Saturday night.
I want my money back.