Birdy is a young man growing up in Philadelphia in the nineteen-sixties who is obsessed with birds and thoughts of flight. He and his friend Al are sent to fight in Vietnam but are shipped back with both physical and mental wounds. As Birdy withdraws into a silent catatonia, can Al bring him out of his dream world ?
Based on a book by William Wharton, this tender character study of friendship, madness and the haunting effects of war is extremely well written and directed, and beautifully played by the two leads. How much you empathise with Birdy depends very much on your experiences I guess, but I find his devotion to learning to fly and his bewilderment at many of the ridiculous qualities of people very easy to identify with. He is a lunatic in the pure sense that as his obsession deepens the gulf between reality and his dreams doesn't matter to him, but he's a well-adjusted lunatic who understands other people but simply isn't interested in behaving like them. His concept that birds fly more through self-confidence and a respect for the properties of air (as opposed to more mundane issues like weight and velocity) is incredibly seductive and thought-provoking. The movie really makes you think about the damage society does to people, both on an everyday suburban level (Birdy's mother, Al's father) and a historical/global level (the horrors of combat). If it has a flaw it's that the lengthy scenes in the military sanitarium are grey, talky and inevitably one-sided, in sharp contrast to the vivid slice-of-life sections in Philly, all of which are full of humour and pathos (the dog-hunting sequence is particularly gleeful and horrible). Overall however it's extraordinarily beautiful - Michael Seresin's photography is haunting and absorbing, lingering over dark blue spaces and dirty backyards or soaring skyward as Birdy escapes into his fantasies. Equally powerful is Peter Gabriel's brooding, rich, esoteric sequencer music which (uniquely in film scoring history I think) was culled, reconceived and re-recorded from samples of songs from his previous two studio albums. The music lurks around every scene, mewling and pulsing like some animated force, providing a voice for Birdy's voiceless inner state. Cage and Modine are both excellent, with a fine support cast and a great troupe of animal actors who duly receive prominent credits - this must be the only film to employ a stunt canary. There were a slew of 'Nam films made in the mid-eighties (Hamburger Hill, Platoon, Gardens Of Stone) and whilst this fits that category it's about much more than just what's now referred to as post-traumatic stress disorder. It's about searching for an escape from everything, a point of view which brings extreme clarity and which no-one else can attain. A fine drama.
Based on a book by William Wharton, this tender character study of friendship, madness and the haunting effects of war is extremely well written and directed, and beautifully played by the two leads. How much you empathise with Birdy depends very much on your experiences I guess, but I find his devotion to learning to fly and his bewilderment at many of the ridiculous qualities of people very easy to identify with. He is a lunatic in the pure sense that as his obsession deepens the gulf between reality and his dreams doesn't matter to him, but he's a well-adjusted lunatic who understands other people but simply isn't interested in behaving like them. His concept that birds fly more through self-confidence and a respect for the properties of air (as opposed to more mundane issues like weight and velocity) is incredibly seductive and thought-provoking. The movie really makes you think about the damage society does to people, both on an everyday suburban level (Birdy's mother, Al's father) and a historical/global level (the horrors of combat). If it has a flaw it's that the lengthy scenes in the military sanitarium are grey, talky and inevitably one-sided, in sharp contrast to the vivid slice-of-life sections in Philly, all of which are full of humour and pathos (the dog-hunting sequence is particularly gleeful and horrible). Overall however it's extraordinarily beautiful - Michael Seresin's photography is haunting and absorbing, lingering over dark blue spaces and dirty backyards or soaring skyward as Birdy escapes into his fantasies. Equally powerful is Peter Gabriel's brooding, rich, esoteric sequencer music which (uniquely in film scoring history I think) was culled, reconceived and re-recorded from samples of songs from his previous two studio albums. The music lurks around every scene, mewling and pulsing like some animated force, providing a voice for Birdy's voiceless inner state. Cage and Modine are both excellent, with a fine support cast and a great troupe of animal actors who duly receive prominent credits - this must be the only film to employ a stunt canary. There were a slew of 'Nam films made in the mid-eighties (Hamburger Hill, Platoon, Gardens Of Stone) and whilst this fits that category it's about much more than just what's now referred to as post-traumatic stress disorder. It's about searching for an escape from everything, a point of view which brings extreme clarity and which no-one else can attain. A fine drama.