Birdy (1984)

How sad is this?

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

If ever I needed convincing that Nicholas Cage is a great actor and human being, it is in this role and the brilliant performance of Birdie himself. If ever good can be portrayed as coming out of bad, it is the deeply moving message and point of making a movie like this. Who needs convincing that war is evil, that life is cruel and that love conquers all its madness? Who can even begin to understand the torment of post-traumatic stress? Those who perpetrate suffering not only to humans but animals alike can never have the empathy that defines us as human. On many levels, the story and how it is told, speaks to the heart and we weep in sympathy for the pain of those who suffer whether from mental illness, bullying or the unspeakable abuses of war. Where have all the great movie makers like Alan Parker gone? There is nothing but fake, shallow and profit orientated products that mirror the fake, shallow and insecure "virtual" relating that goes on today. For that I weep. It has created a hunger deeper than that suffered from starving Biafra.

Imagine a movie where one of the main characters is highly annoying and inscrutable, and the other main character is average, boring and yet also inscrutable. Now imagine they're best friends even though the annoying one doesn't really seem to give a damn and the average one has no understandable reason for his apparent deep love for the annoying one. Throw in some facial bandages on Nic Cage (I guess they want to take his face off) and random scenes of animal abuse, you and you have Birdy. This movie is mostly charmless and pointless. Even the score, which was composed by Peter Gabriel, sounds like some rinker dink low talent crap. This score suits the movie, it's lame and unmemorable. I guess the music did sometimes bring a heightened tension to things; even though nothing would actually happened in a scene, the thudding drum beats still quickened my heart rate a little.I don't have many good things to say about Birdy. It was slightly interesting at points. Nic Cage did a fairly good job of delivering a relatively normal character, but the story gave the character so little motive or meaning. The ending could have been worse /Spoilers/ I actually liked that Birdy didn't "fly" to his death, even though that would have been a rather fitting way to end the character, it would have been depressing and just made the movie seem like an even bigger waste of time. /End Spoilers/Mainly this movie annoyed and bored me. I was unable to relate to much of anything. Certain animal scenes disturbed and troubled me. I don't feel there is much point to this movie. So unless you just like watching an obsessed birder get freaky or you just really want to see Nicolas Cage play what may be his most restrained role, I recommend you skip Birdy.

Two young men (Matthew Modine and Nicolas Cage) in pre-Vietnam, small town America become friends despite one boy who seemingly lives in a dream world: he's obsessed with birds, and fantasizes about flying. Alan Parker directed in a keen, outré manner, but also with a very heavy hand; several sequences which might have been strong (a surprise visit to a slaughterhouse, a bird's death after flying into a window) instead become extreme examples of Parker's preening style, teeter-tottering madly between vulgar bravado and sappy, false sentiment. Modine is a strong, focused actor, but this leading role is rather woebegone--culminating with an exceptionally uncomfortable scene where Birdy has a flying wet-dream (many viewers might give up on the film right there). Cage's role--the sensible one--isn't as showy (or obvious), yet he's the one keeping this flighty material grounded and he comes off better than Modine. The whole movie palls in the last stretch, ridiculously blaming the war for much of Birdy's behavioral problems, and ending with a jokey bit that will either make you laugh or scoff outright. ** from ****

A special trip beyond masks and illusions, innocent lies and slippery politeness.A film about truth and its orations, about the honest manner to live and to trust, about the cruel relation with the past and about refuges.Fight against the Angel and image of world.The passages of memory and recreation of golden age.Exploration, with depressing flavor, of a fragile way, touching corpses of dreams, waiting and deconstructing old facts in a personal puzzle.It is not a film about pain, desire, war, mental illness or friendship. It is not a Vietnamese drama or film about birds."Birdy" is pledge for discover the sense of yourself. A beautiful trip in the nooks of innocence and appearances, a form of spell without magic lights.Birdy is Don Quixote ,prince Myshkin or Oblomov. The passion for birds is not a hobby or mask of frustrations but only manner to escape beyond an unintelligible universe.The interpretation of Modine is brilliant. And Nicholas Cage- great actor in the skin of a delicate character.Splendid film and object of profound reflection.In fact, instrument of catharsis.