Birdsong (2012)

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

hyped garbage

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

I rarely review unless I love a movie and feel something has been unfairly rated due to some anomaly. Here I suspect the anomaly is that it will only be fully felt by people who have known something of this these level of intensity of love and death. Our world has become somewhat numbed to these things. I am lucky and unlucky enough to have had a meeting just like theirs and the story and intensity of it touched me very deeply. It is not just a matter of being open enough for these things to happen, but open enough to recognize their significance. And even in the absence of a war, for such a spiritual heart, as in the Bhagavad Gita, life will always be trench warfare on some level.

This review may contain spoilers. And it should if you want to stay away from this. I don't understand todays castings in many films and series - it must be that some so called actors only get their parts from the reason that they're related to the producers or some such explanation. Eddie Redmayne must be such an "actor", which is a very generous term in his case. Every other participant in this series is actually doing their jobs! Especially Clémence Poésy and Joseph Mawle who doesn't shine here, but does a decent working part.The story and overall plot is very straight forward, and one easily gets involved in the love affair and more recent situation in the trenches of WWI. But the wooden acting of Mr. Redmayne annoyed me from the start! His face doesn't even move much during the shoots. He keeps the same dumbfounded look in every situation! Even when he's seriously wounded and presumed dead, even then he's as expressive as a door knob! Gods! Please will someone explain to Mr. Redmayne that he's chosen the wrong occupation! He's certainly not an actor. And never will be.

*****Contains Spoilers***** Since this is currently available online, I spent my Saturday afternoon watching it. Masterpiece Classic has brought America many excellent British series. "Birdsong" was not one. It was slow and sad. I found it hard to believe that the leads were in love since they never had a conversation. A relationship based on physical attraction is LUST, not love. Also, a happy ending never gets old, so why drag us through a gruesome war and not give us one? In fact, by the end I disliked both leads. I never got a chance to like Stephen since he had very little dialogue. The writers couldn't seem to figure out who he was either. His choices were inconsistent with what they tried to tell us about his character. So I started out by feeling pretty ambivalent about him, and by the end I disliked him completely. He also wasn't very bright. I knew immediately why Isabelle left, and he didn't figure it out until Isabel's sister showed him! It's hard to believe he could be that dense. Many of the other soldiers were more interesting characters, but we didn't get to know them very well. Why did so many good men die, but Stephen had nine lives? It became completely unbelievable how many times he should have died but didn't. It seems like he was the ONLY English survivor at the end. My recollection of WWI history is a bit fuzzy, and this only made it worse. I should have given up on this and watched something else, but I kept thinking it would get better. I was wrong. I'm trying to think of something nice to say about this movie. I don't want to be that person who can only talk about the negative aspects. So after racking my brain, I will say that the sets were very real. I believed they were underground. I believed it was dark, dirty and very dangerous. The costumes were very good as far as I could tell. The lack of color overall, contributed to the bleak and hopeless feeling.This movie was poorly written, the story was hard to follow and most of the characters were lack luster and cold. If you like this time period watch "Downton Abbey." If you want to see an excellent British mini- series, watch "Cranford." There are many others, but these are the two that leap to mind for me. Don't waste your time with "Birdsong."

In 'Birdsong,' which is overall dismal, self-indulgent, plodding, and almost lethally dull, there is one good thing, just one: Marie-Josée Croze, whose acting in this miniseries made her character, Jeanne, stand out to convince the audience that, among the series' other bloodless uninteresting characters, Jeanne alone is flesh and blood, heart and soul - a genuine, fully-dimensioned human being jam-packed with sense and emotion. Ten stars, then, for Ms. Croze's performance.To my wits and sense the rest of the characters appeared to be cardboard cutouts - yes, even Jack Firebrace, who struck me as inhabiting the BBC's stock role of the working class stand-in who delivers the BBC's notional ration of the homely wisdom of the Great Unwashed whom the bien pensant of the BBC unfailingly show themselves to hold in contempt, except when it suits the British political class's worship and imposition of dead dull Marxist tropes.Great, memorable filmmaking succeeds at showing that less is more. 'Birdsong' lavishes an immense surfeit of less, bereft even of the pretense to have even lethargically hinted at more.