Birdy A film by Alan Parker

His shattered face swathed in bandages from a series of reconstructive surgeries, Al Columbato leaves one military hospital for another.

This time it is not for treatment, but to help a childhood friend.

When he arrives, Al, who is well used to Birdy's strangeness, is shocked at his condition.

Birdy is in a secure mental unit in a catatonic state, crouched upon the floor unmoving, unable even to feed himself.

It is Al's task, given to him by the hospital psychiatrist Dr It is Al's task, given to him by the hospital psychiatrist Dr. Weiss, to talk to Birdy, to try to rouse him from his stupor.

The two boys have been friends for years, the closest friends imaginable.

War had separated them and now that war is over they are together again,

and yet they are still apart, for one has returned with terrible physical injuries, the other with his senses destroyed.

And only Al knows that Birdy is living his life as he always wanted to live it, as a bird.

Right from the early days Birdy was odd, different, not like the others.

He dreamed of flying, of birds, of being a bird. His was an all-consuming obsession.

He spent his time observing birds, charming them, catching them and training them.

He made himself suits of feathers and increasingly unlikely contraptions to aid his dream.

Al was a big, strong, bluff, aggressive young man, and a most unlikely friend for the shy, withdrawn Birdy.

But their neighbourhood was rough and they were joined in the strange way children sometimes are; by a mutual need.

They both wanted to escape, to soar above and away from the squalor of their surroundings and find something truer, different, better.

So, although he laughed at his eccentricities, and shook his head at his escapades, Al never mocked Birdy, he helped him try to fulfil that dream.

And somehow, from Birdy, he found the friendship he needed.

As Al watches him in his hospital cell, he recalls those childhood days and talks of them for hours which blend into days which blend into weeks.

Birdy's obsession grew stronger as he went through adolescence . . .

. . . and there were some things he couldn't even tell Al.

But he remembers them now as Al talks to him of those times; he remembers the fantasy life he once had . . .

. . . the way he imagined himself as one of his birds so strongly that he dreamed dreams that felt real.

He remembers as he struggles inside both to find himself again and also to stay as he is . . .

. . . a bird, a free creature with thoughts but no words . . .

. . . that his dreams gradually overtook his waking life until he could no longer tell one from the other.

Al, as he talks, searches constantly for a flicker of recognition from his friend . . .

. . . partly desperate to see it, to see the Birdy he once knew and to know him again.

But he's also afraid for what will happen if he does and wonders if Birdy is better off where he is, cocooned from the harsh, cruel world.

For Al is afraid for himself too; the war for him was a terrible experience.

Al was a boy who hated authority, who had been beaten by his father and thought that he'd been made tough by his experiences.

War showed him differently War showed him differently. War brought a fear to Al that he'd never imagined . . .

. . . and now that war is over he is afraid that he, too, is going insane.

He has found out too many things about himself and about the world and they are things he'd never wanted to know.

Both boys are fighting a desperate battle to overcome their demons and find a way to live again.

Will Birdy begin to respond? Will Al begin to come to terms with his own experiences?

It's the story of an unlikely friendship between two very different boys.

It's the story of the way that 'difference' and 'insanity' are so sadly and inextricably linked in our limited little world.

It's a story of the horror of war and the horror that war can do to a person.

Works Cited http://www.thebookbag.co.uk/reviews/index.php/Birdy_by_William_Wharton

A Beg, Borrow, and Steal, Non-Profit Production - 2017