Birdsong

First of all, BIRDSONG is beautifully filmed and acted. Joseph Mawle is especially memorable as Jack Firebrace--who I quote in my title here--a friend and sort of foil character to the protagonist (Stephen Wraysford) played by Eddie Redmayne. Agree: American audiences may find all the British brogues a bit hard to follow without the subtitles.

While there is a palpable storyline and a good surprise at the end, BIRDSONG appeals more to the heart than to the head. It's quite a sad story, of course, but it avoids going too far in the direction of melodrama. It successfully incorporates some really huge themes: Love, forgiveness, loyalty, and others. There is also a great deal of WWI battle footage: BIRDSONG will probably appeal to most war film aficionados. Warning: Some really graphic scenes of carnage at the Somme and various other battles.

Part I shifts every few minutes from Wraysford's illicit 1910 love affair with the wife of a French business partner to his service in the British army between 1916-18. The two time settings are extremely well-synchronized: The directors and producers did a fine job of making the two stories into one. Part II, though it follows the same general pattern, is a little more of a straightforward, solidified story.

I haven't read Sebastian Faulks's original novel, but I've heard nothing but good things about it. It's probably a hard book to cinematize, but Masterpiece Theater did about the best job possible here.

I was expecting much from Birdsong. I had read the book three years ago for my English A Levels course, and found myself utterly transfixed by the poignant and gut-wrenching story. Since then, Sebastian Faulks' Birdsong has become one of my favourite books of all time. This series does have its good parts. It is photographed beautifully, exquisitely even, the scenery is wonderful in the whole part of the story before Stephen goes off to war, I liked the contrast between the lush pre-war scenes and the bleak colour palette of war itself the music is effective in its simplicity and there are two good performances, the scene-stealing Jack Firebrace of Joseph Mawle and the emotionally complex Jeanne of Marie-Josee Croze. Sadly, I never found myself convinced by the story and characters. This is not helped by a script that is largely incoherent, characters that excepting perhaps Jeanne are lifeless cardboard cut-outs(I know they are not likable characters to begin with but still there is a difference between that and the characters having no life at all) and sluggish pacing. I also found Eddie Redmayne and Clemence Posey miscast, Redmayne is handsome certainly but he was also wooden and uncharismatic while Posey has no chemistry with him and looks like twenty years younger than her novelistic counterpart. The story has scenes that are either condensed(naturally considering the time) or almost endlessly stretched out(not so much), but it was the lack of atmosphere and drama that really spoiled Birdsong. The intimate scenes between Stephen and Isabelle weren't that intimate to me as both actors looked in pain during those scenes, and the war scenes due to the poorly rendered battlefields weren't poignant, tense or gut-wrenching enough. Overall, does have some good things such as the beautiful photography, but the pacing and lack of drama made Birdsong rather dull in my opinion, sorry. 5/10 Bethany Cox

Although there was a lot left out of the original book, the storytelling in this TV miniseries was beautiful. I have been loving Eddie Redmayne for a while now, but after this film, I'm hooked! I am in love with him as was Isabelle. :) I loved the actress who played her as well. She reminded me of young Juliette Binoche. I thought it was a passionate and beautifully told story. The cinematography was spectacular and the massive destruction that WWII left was very well depicted here. More films should show how the Wealthy Upper classes acted as the Generals who would order the lower classes to put themselves on the frontlines basically for suicide missions to keep everyone else in good standing, including those who sat around thinking up brilliant ideas to have innocent young soldiers killed.

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.

Though I haven't read the book yet and I also had no idea this was split into two TV-movies. It came out as one single very long movie on DVD in Germany, so I watched it like that. It did appeal to me, especially acting, though some choices seemed weird. For a TV movie it is surprising I reckon that there is nudity. For regular TV I guess, but then again, we're way past that already.

The structure does seem fitting for a novel and it makes more sense in the book form (or at least seems to). Even without having read it, you can do more in the head of a reader than in a film. Still this seems more than decent enough to stand on its own, especially if the viewer is unaware of its source material.