Bird Saviour, Clouds and Wind on AllMovie

With Bird Saviour, Clouds and Wind (aka Madárszabadíto, Felhö, Szél, 2006), Hungarian director István Szaladják weaves a haunting and lyrical period fable on the importance of asceticism in life and the beauty that lies therein. The tale unfolds at an undefined point in late 19th century Russia, when the paths of two fellow travelers make an unlikely intersection. An inquisitive and seemingly unremarkable young farmer boy named Vaska (Alexandr Markov), who totes a live bird in a wooden cage; and an enigmatic old man called The Bird Saviour (painter Robert Ovakimjan). Vaska, it seems, is journeying from his own village to another, where he plans to see a young woman with whom he has fallen deeply in love; The Bird Saviour pontificates on the meaning of life in between periodic attempts to save the lives of birds (per his name). Together, the duo undertakes an epic journey through forested landscapes and across empty, rolling plains that finds them exchanging poetic and philosophical observations about the meaning of life. Though Szaladják produced his film in his native Hungary, he wrote it (and had the actors speak their lines) in Russian, to impart authenticity to the movie's setting.