There is surely an audience for this kind of feel-good quote-un-quote feminism. It’s unfortunate then that for “Catherine Called Birdy,” Dunham sticks so closely to the surface, leaving behind its strong foundation.
While this makes for an emotional finale, especially for Scott, it deprives the character-and Ramsey-of a big moment of self-actualization.Įvery film adaptation has to pick and choose what elements of its source material to retain and what to jettison. Instead of finding out the value of herself from within, she becomes a damsel to be saved by a man, her value ultimately stemming from her father’s realization of his love for her. Unfortunately, key changes from the book’s ending rob her of what should be a transformational coming-of-age. Birdy’s spirit is like a wild, roaring brook whose nature is to keep flowing no matter what obstacles lay before her. One sight gag with a pigeon arrives dead on arrival-literally. However, Dunham is not Monty Python, and many of the jokes are either forced or don’t land at all. Although, most of the film’s jokes do not align with Chaucer, but rather are rooted in wordplay that is funny for a modern audience’s ear only. One could argue all of this would make for a dour film, yet having read the book both as a child when it was first released and more recently in order to refamiliarize myself with the material, I found it inspiring how well Cushman blends these serious matters with the same bawdy humor that makes Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales still a hoot to read nearly a thousand years on.Īnd it's this humor that Dunham most faithfully carries on in her adaptation, with flatulence jokes aplenty. It takes a willful misreading-or disregard-of the book’s ethos to remove the economics from it all, or to strip Birdy from the strength and fortitude she shows in finding value in her ability to save her family, and her village.
The money from her marriage will help them all, not just her father.Ĭushman’s novel explored what it was like to be a teenager at the time of Medieval England, which is so different from our modern sensibilities that it would be like visiting a different planet. Nor in all its girl power will Birdy get out of this marriage situation as she seems to realize that her fate is also the fate of the village. Why then, does the village in which Birdy and her family live mostly exude a weird utopian Medieval Times vibe? Birdy comments on how her father’s Christmas feasts were more extravagant when she was younger, yet never once does she-or the movie-contemplate how worse off the rest of the village must be in the trickle-down economics of it all. In the novel, Cushman elegantly weaves in the economic realities of Lords and villages and the renting of land, explaining the way they are all tied up together in an economic system that mostly only benefits the Royals at the very top. Scott’s Lord of Stonebridge gets one scene where he briefly explains how when he was 13 he had to save the village by marrying Birdy’s mother, but is cut off by Birdy who calls him out for his own financial misdeeds. Which is why it’s so strange that the rest of the economic realities of Cushman’s novel are universally discarded. Women were traded for titles, for land, or for cold hard cash. Dunham clearly understands that in this era, most marriages were a financial matter. That is, until she becomes betrothed to a wily rich man called Shaggy Beard ( Paul Kaye, maybe the only actor who actually gets Medieval humor), who finds Birdy’s trickery alluring.Īs she attempts to find a way out of her fate, Birdy witnesses her friend Aelis ( Isis Hainsworth) become married off to a nine-year-old child Duke, while George makes a match with an eccentric, yet rich, widow named Ethelfritha ( Sophie Okonedo). From there we follow Birdy as she outwits suitor after suitor, while secretly pining for her Uncle George ( Joe Alwyn), the only good man she knows. However, due to the Lord’s extravagances, the only way to keep the estate above water financially is to marry Birdy off to the highest bidder. Having seen her loving mother Lady Aislinn ( Billie Piper, doing the best she can to save an underwritten role) go through six stillbirth pregnancies, the last thing Birdy wants to do is be married and become a mother. When Birdy starts her monthlies, aided by her nurse Morwenna ( Lesley Sharp), she hides the fact from her father as long as possible.
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