Movie Review – The Birds (Does the bird attack symbolize anxiety and disconnection in modern society?)

The movie revolves around the love story of Melanie and Mitch and the catastrophe of the bird attack. Given the impossibility of the bird attack, it can be interpreted as a symbol of how people’s real-life problems are dismissed as frivolous and ignored by others. The film also criticizes human arrogance and ignorance, as well as social disconnection and lack of communication, and makes us reflect on the relationship between humans and nature through nature’s counterattack.

 

The film is composed of two pillars: the love story between Melanie and Mitch, and the disaster story centered on the bird. When they first meet, Mitch plays a boneheaded prank on Melanie, and she goes to his house to repay the favor and drops off a parakeet. On the way home, Melanie is attacked by a seagull, and as she tends to her wounds, Mitch and Melanie fall in love. Meanwhile, Bodega Bay is experiencing a series of bizarre bird attacks on people. As the news spreads, some people believe in the story, but Mrs. Bundy, an ornithology buff, denies it based on her studies, and a Christian man concludes that it’s all a biblical apocalypse. Mitch arms the house in preparation for a bird attack, but Melanie is the only one in the house who is attacked by birds and exhibits traumatic behavior. The movie ends with the family piling into Mitch’s car to escape.
In this movie, the birds probably take up more screen time than Mitch. Another characteristic of the birds is that their presence is not only visual, but also audible. In the opening sequence of the movie, there are so many birds flying around that the word “chaos” comes to mind, as their loud sounds add to the already dizzying visuals. Even in the bird attack scenes, the sheer number of birds and the urgency of the people dodging them, coupled with the loud, sustained sound, makes the viewer feel hysterical.
The birds attacking people maximizes fear and anxiety, and it heightens the tension of the film for the audience. The bird attacks symbolize the rebellion of nature, but also reveal the helplessness of humans. This goes beyond simple horror and reflects the anxiety and fear of modern society. In particular, the setting of birds attacking people allows the audience to experience extraordinary horror in the midst of familiar everyday life, which further enhances the suspense of the movie.

 

 

However, the idea of birds attacking people to the point of killing them is very unfamiliar. As Mrs. Bundy says that birds don’t have the intelligence to attack humans, it’s logically impossible. As for the cause, in the movie, after a major attack during an explosion, a mother of two points the finger at Melanie, saying, “They say it all started when you arrived!” However, a man claims to have been attacked by seagulls since the week before Melanie arrived, and the cause of this incident remains unclear throughout the movie. The headache-inducing loudness of the birds whenever they appear can be seen as an auditory mise-en-scene that adds to the confusion around the issue of “birds attacking people”.

 

 

If it is impossible for a bird to attack a person in reality, then what does the bird attacking a person in the movie ‘symbolize’? In fact, I think there is something more important than finding a one-to-one corresponding meaning for ‘birds’. As trusted and untrusted people rant about the news of birds attacking people in restaurants after birds attacked children, Mitch says, “The problem is real and everyone is ignoring it. “The problem is real, and everyone wants to ignore it.” And to the man who says there’s “no reason to believe” Mitch, she says, “What’s happening is not a reason? This is perhaps the most important line in the movie.
This line reminded me of the Korean movie ‘ Burning (2018, directed by Lee Chang-dong). In that movie, Jong-soo believes that there is a cat and a well based on what he hears from Hae-mi, but is confused when each person who hears it says that there is no such thing. The similarity is that the other person considers the protagonist’s words as empty and does not believe them. Clearly, the birds attacked people, and there were people who experienced it, but some people who didn’t didn’t listen to them. It was such a disaster that people died, and by the end of the movie, the neighborhood was on lockdown.
I wondered if the movie’s subject matter, the entity attacking people, was set up as a “bird,” which would never happen in real life, to show that people were clearly experiencing real problems that other people were dismissing as nonsense and not listening. I wondered if there was a message to point out the reality of dismissing real problems as nonsense and, as Mitch says, “ignoring them when they exist.
The movie also has a strong element of criticizing human arrogance and ignorance. Humans try to control and dominate nature, but nature fights back, bringing unpredictable disasters to humans. This can be interpreted as the movie’s message, which calls for deep reflection on the relationship between humans and nature. In addition, the characters’ suspicion and mistrust of each other reflects the disconnection and lack of communication in modern society, which highlights the importance of human relationships, another theme of the film.
In conclusion, the symbolism of the birds in the film goes beyond simple horror and has a multi-layered meaning that criticizes human ignorance and arrogance, as well as social distrust and disconnection. These complex messages add depth to the movie and open up the possibility of various interpretations for the audience.