Birdy

I was a bit worried about this film because I had the opportunity to see only those parts of Alan Parker's work that weren't exactly full of optimism, and the main plot of Birdy promised the same. It would be tempting to say that the opposite is true, but not entirely. Many films have been made about the deep friendship between two people broken by the war in Vietnam, but few feature so much humanity and mutual understanding. However, even here, Parker remains faithful to his storytelling style, so the psychiatric hospital - despite having white walls, wide corridors, and not being led by a semi-insane doctor - still feels quite depressing, and the conversations between Ala and Pírek, which have reached a dead end, drive not only the characters but also the viewer to madness. The performances of Matthew Modine and Nicolas Cage are excellent, and both of them handle their "handicaps" exceptionally well. Whether it’s Modine and his "birdie" or Cage’s facial expressions through bandages. The (altogether) rather contradictory five-minute-long war sequence from Vietnam remains quite ambivalent, which, despite its formal precision, comes across as a rather inconsiderately attached insert. It certainly has its justification in the narrative structure, and the film can't do without it, but it seems a bit self-indulgent in comparison to the rest of the film. But never mind all that. Birdy is, after a long time, a movie that made me realize how time sometimes flies by quickly with just a brief glance at the clock. (10/08/2005)