USA,
1984, 120 min
Shown in 1998
CREDITS
- dir
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Alan Parker
- prod
-
Ned Kopp, David Manson, Alan Marshall
- scr
-
Jack Behr, Sandy Kroopf
- cam
-
Michael Seresin
- editor
-
Gerry Hambling
- cast
-
Nicolas Cage, Matthew Modine, Bruno Kirby
- source
-
Columbia Pictures Repertory, 10202 W.Washington Blvd., Culver City, CA 90232. FAX: 310-244-1399
-
COMMENTS
Nicolas Cage appeared in person to receive the Peter J. Owens Award.
OTHER
Defying predictable genres like war film, buddy film and nostalgic coming-of-age film, Alan Parker gives us a fresh, iconoclastic movie that continues to surprise up to the last frame. Nicolas Cage, in one of his earliest performances, tempers his trademark fatalistic smolder with youthful exuberance as Al, a Philly boy whose best friend imagines himself to be a bird. Matthew Modine is Birdy, a diffident, ornithologically obsessed youth whose tenuous grasp on reality is maintained through his friendship with Al. As Al goes through the growing pains of adolescence, Birdy retreats further and further into his dreamworld, a world in which he can fly above the city like his beloved bird Purdah. Reality intrudes in the form of Vietnam, which separates the friends, opening their eyes to life beyond the safe haven of their neighborhood. Told in a series of flashbacks, the film opens with Al traveling to a military hospital to visit Birdy, who squats in a corner of his room all day staring out the window with his head cocked like a bird. Consistently resisting maudlin conclusions, Parker creates a film of intelligence and depth, and Cage’s performance as the wounded Al gives clear evidence of the burgeoning talent that made him a star.
—Jennie Yabroff
FACTOID #175
In 1967, two years prior to her death, the Festival honored Judy Garland in the first (according to the program note) American homage of her work. Garland was unable to attend.
