Birdboy: The Forgotten Children Is An Unforgettable, Shattered Little Treasure

Based on a graphic novel and 2011 short film by Spanish artist Alberto Vázquez, Birdboy: The Forgotten Children has drawn wide critical acclaim, including the 2016 Goya Award for Best Animated Feature. But don’t be fooled by its starring cast of adorable critters: this isn’t a kids movie. Instead, Birdboy is a haunting gem about navigating life in a world gone spectacularly to shit, and confronting decidedly grown-up, complex challenges.

The story tracks the lives of the young creatures left behind in a world shattered by nuclear disaster and industrial ruin, their once idyllic island reduced to a gray ruin and burdened by ever-swelling mounds of garbage. Birdboy, the hollow-eyed and melancholy hero of the story, seems to be always on the move, whether fleeing the snub-nosed canine cops or chasing down his next drug fix. Meanwhile, his estranged girlfriend, Dinky, conspires with a couple school friends to collect enough money to buy a boat and escape.

There’s a homespun quality to the film’s starkly-hued animation, which lends its disarmingly cute characters an unexpected depth and poignancy. Beneath their innocent looks, they roil with quiet desperation. I’m not sure how it’s possible to impart a leaden, thousand-yard stare to an adorable mouse, but each of Birdboy’s characters vibrate with vulnerability and nuance. Vázquez makes them feel truly human and multifaceted; each behaves badly at times, though their motivations are always lamentably understandable. The film doesn’t have a villain, and it doesn’t really need one. The greater evil, by far, is the failed society that pits them against each other.

It’s hard not to read Birdboy as an allegory of modern Spain, a nation whose young people have been disproportionately affected by poor job prospects, leading many to migrate elsewhere. Birdboy acts as a reminder that environmental neglect, demonization of the poor and the absence of opportunity can have shattering effects on individuals, families and entire communities. Though these problems are particularly acute in Spain, American audiences are all too familiar with betrayed promises of upward mobility.

Birdboy is, at times, a resolutely bleak film. But a judicious sprinkling of gallows humor keeps it from becoming a dour, wrist-slitting affair. Early in the film, Dinky’s tin-toy alarm clock weeps at the sight of discarded cans in a garbage heap, horrified these objects must endure “so much suffering.” A ransacked piggy bank later laments, “I’m so empty inside.” Even a duck-shaped pool floaty manages to have a tragic backstory, telling Dinky, “I’ve had to grow up in that filthy dark box.” These little moments keep the film from becoming oppressively dark, without detracting from its substance and emotional heft.

While Birdboy mourns a bright future denied, it nevertheless manages to be a hopeful, affirming film. It sinks its sharp little claws in your heart and doesn’t let go, a warm reminder that if you’re going through hell, keep going.