(USA, 92 min.)
Dir. Nicholas Fakler
Programme: Nightvision
(World Premiere)
Oh, the midnight crowd at Hot Docs is going to love this
one! Sick Birds Die Easy might be in
the running for the gonzo prize of the festival. This fucked-up documentary by
Nicholas Fakler, whose previous film is the geriatric love story Lovely, Still, is a feverish acid trip
through the lunatic fringe.
Fakler embarks on a wild adventure to the jungle of Gabon,
Africa in search of an herbal remedy for drug addiction. The plant, iboga, is said
to cure dependency. An expert in the film’s preamble notes that it can cure cravings for heroin with a single dose. Iboga, the expert also notes, is a
hallucinogenic drug itself. To little surprise, the side
effects of iboga make it illegal in America.
Fakler therefore assembles his drug-addled friends to make a
trip to Africa and sample the drug. A colourful (very colourful) cast of
characters crosses the ocean and embarks on a trek through the dense jungle. The
rehab journey of Sick Birds Die Easy
is indescribably weird. Whether it’s the effect of the Bwiti mysticism in the
land or the influence of the non-stop flow of pot, acid, and OxyContin (I suspect
it’s the latter), the friends’ journey seems like something that Hunter S.
Thompson could only imagine in a fever dream.
Especially strange—and most in need of the healing
journey—is Fakler’s friend Ross, whom Fakler describes as a character “lost in
the Garden of Eden with the Devil and God.” The opening credits also introduce Ross's occupation as "paranoid drug addict". The
citation is appropriate, since Ross’s most lucid moments offer acid-tinged
tangents—if not polemics—that provide un-pc conspiracy theories about 9/11,
Israel, and extraterrestrial veggies. Thanks to Ross, Sick Birds Die Easy is unscripted gold.
This character driven story is a wild adventure. Fakler et
al take the strange premise to uninhibited extremes and show the audience the
fringes of both addiction and recovery. The drug-induced trip down the rabbit
hole is made even more fantastical by some trippy visuals and existential
musing. The animated “stoned ape theory” sequence should do for Sick Birds what “Everytime” did for Spring Breakers.
One could see Sick
Birds much like the Harmony Korine film and take it all as an
hour-and-a-half of first world problems run amok. It’s easy to see how a viewer
might be repulsed by the friends’ ignorant appropriation of foreign culture or
by one crewmember’s intoxicated rant against capitalism that ends with him
burning a wad of money in front of their African tour guides. Murphy’s Law
follows the friends all the way to the jungle, though, as their stickiest
situation occurs when they wake up to find one of their jungle guides lying dead
and cold on the ground. How many American tourists does it take to kill a travel
guide?
Sick Birds Die Easy
is one of those documentaries, like last year’s Despite the Gods, that gets better and better as the subjects find
themselves further off course. “This isn’t the film I intended to make, but I
enjoyed it just as much,” Nicholas observes in voiceover. Sick Birds Die Easy becomes less about the quest for iboga and more about the effects that drugs and addiction have over one’s body and mind, and,
more seriously, one’s relationships. The group tests the limits of their
friendship by seeing how many pilfered dubies or close-ups are too much.
It would be far too easy simply to write off Sick Birds Die Easy due to the
misadventures of the group. Fakler isn’t afraid to depict his friends with a
critical eye. (See, for example, a scene in which Ross demonstrates the health
benefits of hydrating and washing with his own urine.) Portraying the quest for
the iboga plant as something akin to “humanity’s apocalypse,” Sick Birds Die Easy is fully aware that
the actions of the guerrilla-druggie filmmakers create some appalling shit.
Even the film’s final dabble in the Bwiti rituals underscores how much the
Americans miss the point of the foreign remedies. Tatyo, a Frenchman living in
Gabon whom Fakler describes as “like a clown on acid” (there’s a pet name for
everyone), shakes his head at Ross’s attempt to cure himself with the potency
of the iboga. Tatyo decriesRoss as a typical Westerner who misses the symbolical
elements of the healing process. This Lord
of the Flies adventure ends with a rude awakening for the West.
Much like Piggy’s conch, the druggy vibe that gives the
friends power doesn’t last forever. Even in the search for sobriety, they make
plans to consume a baggie’s worth of acid. By the end, though, the consequences
of their self-destructive lifestyle seem clear after a few foolish days of
trouncing about in the mud. Sick Birds
Die Easy, for all its bizarre self-indulgence and white privilege run amok,
is an insanely entertaining head-trip. It also makes a pretty good case to
introduce the iboga plant to the West, if only to prevent future assaults by
drugged-out tourists who get lost in the jungle whilst playing Blair Witch. If there was ever a film to
capture what happens to your brain on drugs, I suspect this is it.
Rating: ★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
Rating: ★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
Sick Birds Die Easy
screens:
Monday, April 29 – 8:30 pm at Cineplex Scotiabank
Tuesday, April 30 – 11:59 pm at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema
Friday, May 3 – 7:00 pm at the Royal
Please visit www.hotdocs.ca
for more information on films, tickets, and showtimes.
