The closure of theaters would seem to have gravely wounded “The Painted Bird,” whose nonstop horrors and nearly three-hour length demand a concentrated immersion. Whether the Czech screenwriter-producer-director Vaclav Marhoul’s ambitious adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski’s 1965 novel quite translates to the screen is another matter. A boy (Petr Kotlar) who barely speaks and, until the end, goes pointedly unnamed passes from person to person in the Eastern European countryside during World War II. He witnesses violence and bears it, picked apart like the bluntly metaphorical fowl of the title — a bird marked with paint and then sent skyward only to be attacked by its fellows.

Source: International New York Times July 16, 2020 10:52 UTC