I first became aware of this movie through the soundtrack by Peter Gabriel. I first bought it years ago on audio cassette, long before I saw the movie. It became one of my all time favorites with both adrenaline running pieces and beautifully peaceful music that you can fall asleep to. It almost made me afraid to see the movie because I feared that it would forever change the way I listened to this music. But certain pieces like “The Heat” have been used in so many movie trailers now that it doesn’t matter where you first heard it. So eventually, I had to rent the movie on videotape and see what all the fuss was about.
“Birdy” was the second part of a double feature I saw last Thursday at the New Beverly Cinema on a double bill with “Angel Heart.” Both were directed by Alan Parker who as a director seems particularly interested in characters that are lost in their obsessions and need others to bring them out of it and back into reality. It stars Nicholas Cage and Matthew Modine in some of their earliest roles on film. They play friends from Philadelphia who are in many ways complete opposites, but they become the best of friends through Birdy’s connection with birds and his desire to become one.
“Birdy” is a great movie, a great character study about two young men who grow up together, and who are forever changed by the war they are drafted into. The movie is based on a book by William Wharton which chronicles two characters who are thrown into World War II. For the film, it was changed to Vietnam which would soon become a major location for films like “Platoon” and “Full Metal Jacket among others. The movie starts with the two main characters who are now out of the Vietnam War, but who are forever scared by it permanently. In the end, all they have is each other.
The movie goes back and forth in time as we start off with Nicholas Cage’s character coming out of the hospital after his face has been seriously disfigured in combat. Bandaged like a Frankenstein creation, he is no longer the ladies man we see getting to first base like before. Al ends up going to an army hospital where Birdy (we never learn his real name) is holed up in a cell not saying a word. After the damage the war has done to him, Birdy has seemingly accomplished what he has set out to do – to become a bird in his own mind.
We then see these kids during their high school years in Philadelphia where they seem like complete opposites, but who both want the same thing in life. They want to fly away from their problems, but Birdy is a little more literal about it. With Al, he has an abusive father to deal with who thinks nothing of smacking his son around when he screws up, and being on the high school wrestling team helps him deal with his frustration of not being able to stand up to him. With Birdy, he has a tough as nails father who is nowhere as sympathetic and understanding as his janitor father, and who is always taking away the baseballs that the kids unintentionally keep batting into her yard. Both Al and Birdy get together in money making schemes like carrier pigeons they feel they can make a profit from. They later turn their attentions to a car in a wrecking yard that they manage to get running again.
Al really represents Birdy’s strongest link to the outside world as Birdy falls deeper and deeper into his obsession with birds and in wanting to fly away from all the troubles in the world. Birdy never shows any interest in anything else that you expect teenagers to indulge themselves in like girlfriends, making out, or being normal. One of the funniest expressions Birdy has is when he talks about how bad he feels for women that they have to have breasts that they just have to carry around and how they flop all over the place. I can’t think of anyone else who would make that argument (man or woman).
The scenes that Birdy spends with a beautiful yellow canary he ends up getting and naming Burda are some of the most interesting scenes here. It’s not just some National Geographic special you are watching as we see Birdy studying these birds ever so closely, almost making love to them. There is one amazing sequence where he is dreaming that he is flying like a bird and Parker shoots the scene from a bird’s eye view as we go around people and fly over cars and then way up into the sky above. All this done to the instrumental tune to Peter Gabriel’s “Not One Of Us.” Even without that song
While all this may make the movie sound like a nostalgic journey to the past, it is actually a very hard hitting movie which has its funny moments, but also has its awkward and painful moments. Seeing Matthew Modine going to a prom, only because his mom threatens to get rid of his birds if he doesn’t, is painful in terms of how much we know that he doesn’t want to be there. Hell, I would have killed to date the girl he goes out with! And seeing at the start of the movie where these two characters are at a moment where they are forever changed, we know that these two are on a descent which may permanently rob them of their humanity. We know things are not going to end well for these two, so there is a strong air of unease as we get towards the point where they are drafted into a war that they are lucky to come out of alive.
Seeing these two young actors early in their careers (this movie came out in 1984!) reminds you of just how talented they have always been. Nicholas Cage’s role of Al is one of my favorites of his as we see him as a fun loving guy, and then as a frightened war veteran who is terribly uncertain of what lies ahead for him. Having to spend so much of the movie in bandages could seem so limiting to some actors, but not to Mr. Cage. I heard that before he started making this film, he had his wisdom teeth taken out, and he insisted on having it done without Novocain. Just hearing about that makes my mouth hurt! Talk about suffering for your art! And the suffering Cage goes through as this character is pretty raw and genuine. I like to see him play more roles like this in the future instead of him doing another movie like “Ghost Rider.”
Matthew Modine is an actor we haven’t seen much of recently. The last thing I remember him being in was probably “Transporter 2” with Jason Statham. His role is especially hard to play because it could easily look so broad and ridiculous, but Modine makes Birdy’s love for birds seem so real that it almost doesn’t matter that he has cut himself off from the world around him. When we see him at the hospital, he is almost completely speechless and has to convey how he feels through expressions, and that is something you need to learn to be a great film actor so that you don’t emote all over the place. This is one his best performances as well, and it lead him to a career where he has played many different roles.
This is one of Alan Parker’s best movies, and it stands alongside his best work like “Midnight Express” and “Mississippi Burning” among others. Alan has not just made some simple antiwar movie about how unnecessary the war in Vietnam was, but of the bond of friendship and how it can never be completely broken, especially when you are in need. In essence, the scars (both physically and mentally) that are inflicted on them in combat bring them together because it seems like no one else can fully understand them. The heart of this movie is in the way these two guys lean on each other, and how they recognize each other’s strengths. Parker gets that and makes it the main thrust of this excellent motion picture. In the end, most of his movies deal with people in a place that seems so alien and unwelcome to them.
And of course, I can never get sick of Peter Gabriel’s score to the film. Some say that is dated, but I say bullshit to that. While it may seem weird to compose music to a movie that takes place in the 60’s with an electronic score, it fits perfectly into the themes that Director Parker portrays in this movie. Like the characters, it is in its own world and dwells in both the beauty and the pain of life. The music is cribbed from a lot of Peter’s other albums (he freely admits this in the album notes), and it would have been interesting if he did include some of the lyrics to songs used here like “Wallflower” as it deals with the mental state these characters are stuck in and need to fight out of.
“Birdy” is one of those great movies that stays with you long after the movie has ended, or long after your VHS tape of it is all faded and worn out. It also has one of the best endings of any movie I have ever seen. I refuse to ruin it for you. You just have to see it for yourself!
**** out of ****
“Birdy” was the second part of a double feature I saw last Thursday at the New Beverly Cinema on a double bill with “Angel Heart.” Both were directed by Alan Parker who as a director seems particularly interested in characters that are lost in their obsessions and need others to bring them out of it and back into reality. It stars Nicholas Cage and Matthew Modine in some of their earliest roles on film. They play friends from Philadelphia who are in many ways complete opposites, but they become the best of friends through Birdy’s connection with birds and his desire to become one.
“Birdy” is a great movie, a great character study about two young men who grow up together, and who are forever changed by the war they are drafted into. The movie is based on a book by William Wharton which chronicles two characters who are thrown into World War II. For the film, it was changed to Vietnam which would soon become a major location for films like “Platoon” and “Full Metal Jacket among others. The movie starts with the two main characters who are now out of the Vietnam War, but who are forever scared by it permanently. In the end, all they have is each other.
The movie goes back and forth in time as we start off with Nicholas Cage’s character coming out of the hospital after his face has been seriously disfigured in combat. Bandaged like a Frankenstein creation, he is no longer the ladies man we see getting to first base like before. Al ends up going to an army hospital where Birdy (we never learn his real name) is holed up in a cell not saying a word. After the damage the war has done to him, Birdy has seemingly accomplished what he has set out to do – to become a bird in his own mind.
We then see these kids during their high school years in Philadelphia where they seem like complete opposites, but who both want the same thing in life. They want to fly away from their problems, but Birdy is a little more literal about it. With Al, he has an abusive father to deal with who thinks nothing of smacking his son around when he screws up, and being on the high school wrestling team helps him deal with his frustration of not being able to stand up to him. With Birdy, he has a tough as nails father who is nowhere as sympathetic and understanding as his janitor father, and who is always taking away the baseballs that the kids unintentionally keep batting into her yard. Both Al and Birdy get together in money making schemes like carrier pigeons they feel they can make a profit from. They later turn their attentions to a car in a wrecking yard that they manage to get running again.
Al really represents Birdy’s strongest link to the outside world as Birdy falls deeper and deeper into his obsession with birds and in wanting to fly away from all the troubles in the world. Birdy never shows any interest in anything else that you expect teenagers to indulge themselves in like girlfriends, making out, or being normal. One of the funniest expressions Birdy has is when he talks about how bad he feels for women that they have to have breasts that they just have to carry around and how they flop all over the place. I can’t think of anyone else who would make that argument (man or woman).
The scenes that Birdy spends with a beautiful yellow canary he ends up getting and naming Burda are some of the most interesting scenes here. It’s not just some National Geographic special you are watching as we see Birdy studying these birds ever so closely, almost making love to them. There is one amazing sequence where he is dreaming that he is flying like a bird and Parker shoots the scene from a bird’s eye view as we go around people and fly over cars and then way up into the sky above. All this done to the instrumental tune to Peter Gabriel’s “Not One Of Us.” Even without that song
While all this may make the movie sound like a nostalgic journey to the past, it is actually a very hard hitting movie which has its funny moments, but also has its awkward and painful moments. Seeing Matthew Modine going to a prom, only because his mom threatens to get rid of his birds if he doesn’t, is painful in terms of how much we know that he doesn’t want to be there. Hell, I would have killed to date the girl he goes out with! And seeing at the start of the movie where these two characters are at a moment where they are forever changed, we know that these two are on a descent which may permanently rob them of their humanity. We know things are not going to end well for these two, so there is a strong air of unease as we get towards the point where they are drafted into a war that they are lucky to come out of alive.
Seeing these two young actors early in their careers (this movie came out in 1984!) reminds you of just how talented they have always been. Nicholas Cage’s role of Al is one of my favorites of his as we see him as a fun loving guy, and then as a frightened war veteran who is terribly uncertain of what lies ahead for him. Having to spend so much of the movie in bandages could seem so limiting to some actors, but not to Mr. Cage. I heard that before he started making this film, he had his wisdom teeth taken out, and he insisted on having it done without Novocain. Just hearing about that makes my mouth hurt! Talk about suffering for your art! And the suffering Cage goes through as this character is pretty raw and genuine. I like to see him play more roles like this in the future instead of him doing another movie like “Ghost Rider.”
Matthew Modine is an actor we haven’t seen much of recently. The last thing I remember him being in was probably “Transporter 2” with Jason Statham. His role is especially hard to play because it could easily look so broad and ridiculous, but Modine makes Birdy’s love for birds seem so real that it almost doesn’t matter that he has cut himself off from the world around him. When we see him at the hospital, he is almost completely speechless and has to convey how he feels through expressions, and that is something you need to learn to be a great film actor so that you don’t emote all over the place. This is one his best performances as well, and it lead him to a career where he has played many different roles.
This is one of Alan Parker’s best movies, and it stands alongside his best work like “Midnight Express” and “Mississippi Burning” among others. Alan has not just made some simple antiwar movie about how unnecessary the war in Vietnam was, but of the bond of friendship and how it can never be completely broken, especially when you are in need. In essence, the scars (both physically and mentally) that are inflicted on them in combat bring them together because it seems like no one else can fully understand them. The heart of this movie is in the way these two guys lean on each other, and how they recognize each other’s strengths. Parker gets that and makes it the main thrust of this excellent motion picture. In the end, most of his movies deal with people in a place that seems so alien and unwelcome to them.
And of course, I can never get sick of Peter Gabriel’s score to the film. Some say that is dated, but I say bullshit to that. While it may seem weird to compose music to a movie that takes place in the 60’s with an electronic score, it fits perfectly into the themes that Director Parker portrays in this movie. Like the characters, it is in its own world and dwells in both the beauty and the pain of life. The music is cribbed from a lot of Peter’s other albums (he freely admits this in the album notes), and it would have been interesting if he did include some of the lyrics to songs used here like “Wallflower” as it deals with the mental state these characters are stuck in and need to fight out of.
“Birdy” is one of those great movies that stays with you long after the movie has ended, or long after your VHS tape of it is all faded and worn out. It also has one of the best endings of any movie I have ever seen. I refuse to ruin it for you. You just have to see it for yourself!
**** out of ****
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