Birdy

Getting back to the films of Alan Parker, his next was 1984's Birdy, an emotionally taut drama that explores two themes: PSTD, this time during the conflict in Vietnam, and friendship, which I think ends up the stronger of the two.

Birdy concerns the unlikely friendship of two high school boys in South Philly during the 1960s. Nicolas Cage is Al, a popular kid with a swagger, but a kind heart. Matthew Modine is Birdy, so nick-named because of his obsession with birds (we never learn his real name). When the film begins Birdy is in an Army psychiatric hospital. His physical wounds were minor, but he refuses to speak, and sits in a crouch as if he were a bird.

Cage was also injured, severely. He he has bandages around his face after reconstructive surgery. Modine's doctor has asked Cage to visit to see if he can get through to him.

Then we see many flashbacks about how the two became friends. Modine is the weird kid who doesn't play with the others. But Cage is drawn to his interest in pigeons, and almost against his instincts joins Modine on some dangerous schemes to capture some. At one point both boys dress in suits made of pigeon feathers to get closer to the birds.

But after Modine gets injured on one of these escapades, his mother destroys the coop. The boys then fix up an old car, but Cage's father (Sandy Baron) sells it out from under them. But not before they enjoy a trip to Atlantic City, where Modine, not interested in girls, blows a chance for Cage to get laid.

Modine is what we would call autistic today. He has difficulty socializing, and is at true peace only with birds. He later says he would like to die and be reborn a bird. Cage can only understand this so much, and when the two go off to war they part on bad circumstances.

Birdy is surprisingly humorous for a film about PSTD (Cage has nightmares about the shell that went off in his face, and the longer he stays at the hospital the more worried they'll lock him up, too). While the scenes in the hospital are a bit too melodramatic--will Modine talks before Cage is sent away--the scenes of their antics as boys, such as when Modine uses a home-made ornithopter to try to take flight in a garbage dump, are enchanting. It is true that on paper these two would never be friends, but the script and the performances sell it.

And they are good performances. Modine is perfect as a troubled young man who just wants to fly, and it's always refreshing to see Cage as a young actor, when he wasn't the self-parody he is now. Birdy is a great film.