As an English soldier fights in the horrific trenches of northern France, he is haunted by the memories of his forbidden love affair with a French woman.
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I'll tell you why so serious
Great Film overall
It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.
While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.
Let me start by saying we love just about everything on Masterpiece. We also rent a lot of British mysteries, dramas, and especially period pieces from Netflix. Our main complaint is that the male lead in Birdsong is quite possibly the most wooden and boring acting we've ever seen. Just awful. The female lead is also pretty wooden and her performance is even worse than when she appeared in Gossip Girl. I have nothing good to say about this show except the outfits were pretty.We expect quality from Masterpiece and this sure did not measure up! You'd be better off watching repeats of Poirot or Foyle's War.
This review may contain spoilers. And it should if you want to stay away from this. I don't understand todays castings in many films and series - it must be that some so called actors only get their parts from the reason that they're related to the producers or some such explanation. Eddie Redmayne must be such an "actor", which is a very generous term in his case. Every other participant in this series is actually doing their jobs! Especially Clémence Poésy and Joseph Mawle who doesn't shine here, but does a decent working part.The story and overall plot is very straight forward, and one easily gets involved in the love affair and more recent situation in the trenches of WWI. But the wooden acting of Mr. Redmayne annoyed me from the start! His face doesn't even move much during the shoots. He keeps the same dumbfounded look in every situation! Even when he's seriously wounded and presumed dead, even then he's as expressive as a door knob! Gods! Please will someone explain to Mr. Redmayne that he's chosen the wrong occupation! He's certainly not an actor. And never will be.
*****Contains Spoilers***** Since this is currently available online, I spent my Saturday afternoon watching it. Masterpiece Classic has brought America many excellent British series. "Birdsong" was not one. It was slow and sad. I found it hard to believe that the leads were in love since they never had a conversation. A relationship based on physical attraction is LUST, not love. Also, a happy ending never gets old, so why drag us through a gruesome war and not give us one? In fact, by the end I disliked both leads. I never got a chance to like Stephen since he had very little dialogue. The writers couldn't seem to figure out who he was either. His choices were inconsistent with what they tried to tell us about his character. So I started out by feeling pretty ambivalent about him, and by the end I disliked him completely. He also wasn't very bright. I knew immediately why Isabelle left, and he didn't figure it out until Isabel's sister showed him! It's hard to believe he could be that dense. Many of the other soldiers were more interesting characters, but we didn't get to know them very well. Why did so many good men die, but Stephen had nine lives? It became completely unbelievable how many times he should have died but didn't. It seems like he was the ONLY English survivor at the end. My recollection of WWI history is a bit fuzzy, and this only made it worse. I should have given up on this and watched something else, but I kept thinking it would get better. I was wrong. I'm trying to think of something nice to say about this movie. I don't want to be that person who can only talk about the negative aspects. So after racking my brain, I will say that the sets were very real. I believed they were underground. I believed it was dark, dirty and very dangerous. The costumes were very good as far as I could tell. The lack of color overall, contributed to the bleak and hopeless feeling.This movie was poorly written, the story was hard to follow and most of the characters were lack luster and cold. If you like this time period watch "Downton Abbey." If you want to see an excellent British mini- series, watch "Cranford." There are many others, but these are the two that leap to mind for me. Don't waste your time with "Birdsong."
Birdsong provided realistic insight into the horror (and tedium) of WWI; much less "glamorous" than WWII, but clearly equal in the scale of human suffering. Add to that the frustration of a young man coming of age and there is little raw emotion left.Eddie Redmayne IS Stephen Wraysford! A marvelous WWI officer; young, idealistic, and devoted to his men, he understood what they were going through, the hopelessness of war, and that, in the final analysis, all that matters is loving and touching! Years of suffering had infused Stephen with wisdom beyond his years. His time as a young lover occupied an exaggerated place in his life because he was completely enamored with Isabelle, yet had such a short time with her! He was familiar with paid sex with prostitutes, but his heart belonged to Isabelle. Sadly, he did not understand that a woman who was weak enough to succumb to an affair was not a good candidate for depth of commitment. She was Stephen's entire "world," but her lack of self-esteem prevented her from understanding that her worth to him was enormous. The bunker scenes with Joseph Mawle (Firebrace) and Richard Madden (Weir) and Eddie Redmayne are absolute magic. It is easy to see why they are rated as up and coming stars! They hit just the right notes as young men who were stuck in the war effort and were trying to do the best they could, while wanting it to be over and to just "go home." Oddly, Stephen could actually "go home" when he had leave since he had lived close to this battle area of France before the war. Stephen Wraysford was irreparably changed by the war and was forced to compromise his remaining years. His physical needs were met, but his emotional needs were never addressed; they could not be. If the war had not happened, one can imagine a long and satisfactory (if more shallow) life for Stephen Wraysford, involved in the manufacture of fabric, and of finding love, and if his future was to be in France or back in England. But, the war did happen, and those four years of horror continued to run roughshod over the remainder of his days.