Catherine Called Birdy Review: Diary of A Teenager From The Middle Ages | Filmyhype
Cast: Bella Ramsey, Andrew Scott, Billie Piper
Director: Lena Dunham
Streaming Platform: Amazon Prime Video
Filmhype.com Ratings: 3.5/5 (three and a half stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
The new film Catherine Called Birdy by Lena Dunham arrives on Amazon Prime Video, a multifaceted and tireless author and director who, after the recent, almost unanimous and burning disappointment of Sharp Stick, seems to have found a happy balance between the strength of the themes dear to her heart and the grace and lightness of his most inspired moments, as we will try to tell you in this review by Catherine Called Birdy. Based on the children’s novel of the same name Karen Cushman, which gave a wave of joyful rebellion to a plethora of girls of the 90s, Dunham’s film is a comedy with a medieval setting that speaks with conviction and panache even today’s teenagers.
Lena Dunham’s writing has a direct and distinct style. She can be easily recognized behind the jabs against patriarchy and the liberation of stereotypes and female cages that she has been able to deprive herself of with the generational series Girls. A manifesto invariably linked to the female vision within the contemporary world in which the story was told, which saw Dunham’s outlook on the world as well as that of her fans and characters grow and develop. The issues dear to the author’s pen have also remained with the continuation of a career that began with the serial product of HBO and that saw her move and move between the writing of stories and the appearances in acting (you know the story of Lena Dunham and the kiss to Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood?), Dividing her talent in the various artistic and productive aspects of the audiovisual.
Catherine Called Birdy Review: The Story
Compared to the girls of the Middle Ages, both the teenagers of the 90s and those of the 21st century certainly have more options in front of them, in terms of education, career, or marriage opportunities. It is difficult to imagine a darker historical moment for women, forced to obey and serve a man, the father, the brother, and later the husband; condemned to the wear and tear of one pregnancy after another and to the agony of seeing most of the children die in swaddling clothes, and constantly exposed to the risk of dying in childbirth. This a gloomy prospect for 14-year-old Catherine, known as Birdy, who would like to leave for the Crusades like her charming uncle George and who instead discovers that her father, the likable but somewhat vicious Lord Rollo, plans to marry her very soon to a moneyed suitor who can help him tidy up his rundown finances and the ruin of the Stonebridge Manor estate.
The audacious spirit of work like Catherine enhances the peculiarity of its protagonist, who in being the typical heroine of a medieval novel, an aspiring bride who refuses marriage and denies the good morals of her title, is at the same time completely alien to it. Certainly, the film faces the path of awareness of the role to which women are chained and equally consciously seeks the most radical of detachments. In outlining the young woman’s self-learning path, the story crosses a path and playfully articulated evolutions. Unusual the straight and invariable attitude of the stories linked to female figures in search of redemption and resolution, making the film an expression of the capricious and insolent character of its protagonist.
In Catherine, the sense of the unusual in front of the homonymous character expands to the refinement of the details and relationships that embellish the narrative, which for no reason follows the canonical flows of a work in which her heroine only wants to rebel to be loved ones and the entire establishment, but it returns the confusion of being so young and still must figure out how to survive life. What our place in the world might be, what the girl’s mother hopes is “the right one” for her children: not imposed by others, by rank, by talents, but by space on the earth to which she feels she belongs and where you can be yourself.
Catherine Called Birdy Review and Analysis
Our young heroine is thus called to give up her wildlife in the open air, her alliances not in keeping with the shepherd and the miller, geographically limited adventures, but indispensable to her curiosity and liveliness, to save the family from economic turmoil. caused by his father. She is asked to give up Birdy to become Lady Catherine, and she doesn’t want to know. Her rebellion is indefatigable, her spirit does not bend in the face of knocks and threats, and the tricks put in place to ward off the succession of rich and unpleasant suitors are irresistible and hilarious.
To give a face and a body to this incandescent spirit, Lena Dunham has in her corner a girl as special as Birdy: Bella Ramsay, or the unforgettable Lyanna Mormont from Game of Thrones. If in the role of the tiny and belligerent head of the Bear Island family Ramsay had amazed us with grit and energy, here he has the whole film to himself and does not miss the opportunity to show a range of emotions, gestures, and nuances worthy of a consummate actress. Her brilliant stage presence is enough to make the film more than enjoyable: where the narrative material becomes a bit weaker and the writing less original and crackling, just a glance, a tongue and Birdy puts us back in the cage.
If Ramsey holds the film on his shoulders with incredible maturity and undeniable skill, his performance also experiences brilliant interactions with the accompanying cast, led by “dad” Andrew Scott, who after Sherlock’s Moriarty and Fleabag’s sexy priest has for his hands another edgy role that he faces and shapes and overturns with the skill and charm we know him. Not all of the minor characters are equally well developed and the film frays a bit at moments when it fails to give them a meaningful place in Birdy’s journey, but for Game of Thrones fans – like the writer – there is. is the added fun of tracking down three other performers from the HBO show alongside Bella Ramsey (Nina Gold casting is always a certainty).
For everyone, however, there is a very current and very precious message: never give up, never lose faith in who we are and in those we love and don’t give up our conquests by an inch: the Middle Ages are just around the corner. and the dark forces of society that turn against itself stop at nothing to stop the flight of the maidens with wings. An approach to others to discover more of one’s interiority, understanding that they can be both saviors of oneself and those around you as well as being able to be saved – albeit for a fixed period. A convolution of moods and lessons that the teenager learns by falling in love and losing love, by sinking roots in true friendships and by clashing with a patriarchal image that Lena Dunham fills with conflict and benefit of the doubt, coming into conflict with the severe idea and heedless of his medieval father.
Andrew Scott husband of Billy Piper and father of the protagonist, the versatile Bella Ramsey, which in duets with the very young colleague shows the scrutiny and study of a parent with his daughter. A relationship becomes a fundamental subtext for Catherine’s growth and gazes on the world, which is also unusual and in line with the rest of the somersaults in the script and the acting of the opera. With a young woman still unable to take flight and yet much higher than many of her peers in the assimilation of those codes of behavior and good manners to be able to overturn everything, Catherine is released as the personality of her protagonist. A reflection of wit and impetuosity, for the diary of a young teenager from the Middle Ages who is about to become a wonderful, splendid, crazy and playful woman.
Catherine Called Birdy Review: The Last Words
Catherine Called Birdy is an entertaining and intelligent comedy that unfolds the jaw-dropping qualities of young Bella Ramsey and brings a little confidence and energy to 21st century girls. Lena Dunham continues to explore the world of female characters with her pen and this time with a teenager in the Middle Ages ready to become a woman. A playful and convoluted portrait of a young woman determined not to give up her freedom, for a whimsical story in writing and acting as the character of its protagonist, a talented Bella Ramsey, who also explores a peculiar father-daughter relationship with the character by Andrew Scott.
