Missed opportunity

JDuu

As a long standing fan of the novel I had been eagerly awaiting the release of a theatrical version Birdsong for the best part of 7 years, finally it is here... and I am left feeling massively disappointed.

I appreciate that it is difficult to adapt what could essentially be a 5 hour film into the space of 3 hours, budgetary constraints and the use of artistic licence, so I won't detract on it not being a carbon copy of the book and try to be as fair as possible.

Cast: My interpretation of Stephen was of a war hardened, off-beat and troubled young man, which made his character complex and interesting. Here they seem to have cast a Jenson Button look-a-like. I don't seem to remember a description of Stephen with mousey hair and twinkling blue eyes. I find this to be a casting made to appease the female Sunday night drama demographic. Clemece Posey is FAR too young and fair to play Isabelle, I actually thought the actress playing Jeanne was a far better fit. In addition, Rene Azaire was also portrayed as much younger and capable than his pompous, bumbling counterpart in the novel, and I had a hard time accepting him to be the same pushover.

Location: The novel heavily emphasises the extent of the mud and decay over no-man's land. Here the battle seems to be taking place in modern day Helmand province, the sandy white shingle is a complete contrast to all I have learned and expected from what a WW1 battlefield might look like. I understand that the scenes were filmed in Hungary due to budgeting but if it looked that arid would it have killed them to have at least sprayed a hosepipe over it?

Pyrotechnics/sound effects: These were laughable, I have had bigger fireworks in my back garden than what they were supposedly passing off as shells. During a "bombardment" we see a few small puffs of smoke then, suddenly, a man lying with half his entrails removed. Faulks describes the shelling as an incessant bombardment capable of driving a man mad, yet the men are quite able to hold a normal conversation moments prior to their assault on the Somme.

Acting: This brings me to what is the lowest point of the entire piece where Thomas Turgoose's character Tipper exclaims in a tone akin to a primary school child reciting a nativity line "Sir, it sounds as though the air is made of met-al"... The delivery of this line was simply woeful and a poor attempt at trying to build some kind of threat element prior to the assault. Another on of the miners appears to be posthumously blinking towards the end, I can't believe the script supervisors didn't notice this. Much of the dialogue is monotone and flaccidly delivered.

I could go on but overall I found it to be a sterile, atmosphere-less adaptation of a work of fiction so promising I had hoped the BBC would be able to do it justice.

score 5/10

JDuu 29 January 2012

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2557389/