#7: Birdy (1984)

Hello! My name is Ed and I am trying to win the lottery by watching Nicolas Cage films, because I believe that Nicolas Cage is magic and has the power to distort the laws of probability, or at least I am willing to pretend to believe that for the sake of a thin conceit. (If you’re just joining me, start here for the full reasoning behind this.)

Another thing that idiots suppose has the power to bend the laws of probability is birds. A bird shitting on you is good luck. Seeing one magpie is bad luck. Seeing several magpies causes you to remember the 1970s, and so on. This is all obviously nonsense — every kind of bird doing anything at all is bad luck, because birds are all gross mutants and looking at them for any length of time makes me feel ill.

I’m not entirely clearly why this is, but one time a dead pigeon appeared in my front garden and it had all it’s guts hanging out and disposing of it (using a baking tray, rolling pin and rubber gloves, all of which I binned immediately afterwards) was one of the most upsetting moments of my entire life, much to the amusement of my idiot friends who aren’t even afraid of dead birds with all their guts hanging out.

Unfortunately for me, the next film on my list is Birdy, which features dead birds, alive birds, men dressed up as birds and worst of all, baby birds, nature’s most horrifying creation. When I was a kid I stopped eating boiled eggs for a bit because I was terrified of the possibility of finding dead chick inside. I have some really messed up stuff going in my head re: birds, apparently.

Birdy is a rather strange story about two teenagers, one of whom, Matthew Modine’s titular Birdy, is so obsessed with birds that he wants to turn into one and the other of whom, Al, is played Nicolas Cage. The film explores the psychological consequences of their time spent serving in the Vietnam War, while flashing back to show the origin and development of their friendship, and also loads of horrible bastard birds.

The film is in some ways most effective in the framing sequences in which Al visits Birdy in a mental hospital and attempt to coax him out of the near catatonic state his military service has left him in. Birdy’s mute status leaves Cage with some long, rather theatrical monologues and whilst his performance isn’t mind-blowing it’s engaging enough and in terms of straight-forward dramatic performances, his best to this point.

The flashbacks, however, are something of a cypher. The film traces Birdy’s growing obsession, which leads from training to carrier pigeons, to dressing up as a bird, to building a “flying machine”, to ultimately believing that he can actually somehow become a bird — but it’s unclear if we’re supposed to think of him as a misunderstood eccentric or as someone with a severe mental illness.

The friendship is also presented somewhat obliquely — given Birdy’s visible disinterest in women (at point he is proffered some bosoms and is left utterly baffled) and several moments of rather tender physical contact, one could hunt for the obvious subtext. But that doesn’t, to me, seem to unlock anything of particular interest here (unless you really want to imagine Nicolas Cage and Matthew Modine kissing), and if anything Birdy just seems to really want to kiss an actual disgusting bird.

Anyway, then they go to war and I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a film with the Vietnam War in it, but you’ll never guess: it goes very badly for everyone concerned. As with much of Birdy, the war sequences are visually effective but lack substance — at heart it’s entirely standard Vietnam movie fare with a cameo from a tropical bird whacked in at the end.

The film’s highpoint is, fittingly literally, a technically innovative sequence from the POV of Birdy as he dreams that he has become one of the birds flying over his neighbourhood. The footage, shot with a camera on wires hung from four 100 foot high posts, is stunning, and, most importantly doesn’t involve any revolting close-ups of birds.

In summary: an insubstantial, occasionally quite well-shot curiosity ideal for people who think looking at birds is nice.

THE NUMBERS

2 —There’s an urban legend that while preparing for Birdy, Nicolas Cage had two teeth extracted without anaesthetic purely to get a lived experience of intense pain to reference in his performance. This is largely bollocks — Cage himself says he happened to need to get two baby teeth removed and it fitted with the facial injuries Al suffers in Vietnam— but I also had to have two baby teeth removed so let’s take that as a omen. (I didn’t even get to be in a film, I just got stupid braces.)

3 — Al’s army service number is 10107003.

14 — Birdy is being kept in cell number 114 of the mental hospital.

16 — Birdy likes being in the sea because he think swimming underwater is a bit like flying. He stays under while an increasingly concerned Al counts out 16 Mississippis.

40 — After a lot of exercise Birdy believe he can flap his arms with “40 pounds of flying power”.

53 — Birdy and Al fix up a 1953 Ford. The first time they take it on the road they are arrested for driving an unregistered vehicle and Al’s dad flogs the car to his mate. Al’s dad sucks.

THE RESULT

Nothing on the main ticket, but the free Lucky Dip I won last time matched 2 numbers, and so has itself won me another free Lucky Dip under the weird new rules of the slightly revised modern day National Lottery. I will attribute this to The Cotton Club, which won me the original Lucky Dip, rather than the revolting horrible bird film that I hope to never see again.

NEXT TIME ON NICOLAS CAGE:

Oh Christ, The Boy In Blue, yet another sodding period drama. About fucking ROWING. Give me strength. At least there probably aren’t any birds in it.