Catherine, Called Birdy

Or: It Takes a Village

Ever wonder what it was like to be a teenager in the middle ages? Do you then immediately shudder with repulsion and go back to cat videos? Well take a mosey by Catherine, Called Birdy and discover that the past, though terrible, was not without its joys, liberations, and moments of happiness.

We follow the diary of Catherine (her nickname may surprise you) (Bella Ramsey) at fourteen years of age, coming into her own as the youngest child and only daughter of the ruling family of an English village around the 1200’s. She is determined not to be a lady (a decidedly dull fate) and is interested in finding what kind of life, as a girl, she is allowed to craft for herself. Along her quest for sovereignty she also documents and nurtures her friendships with her maid, the castle goat herd, a neighboring lady, and her contentious relationship with her father the dissolute Lord Rollo (Andrew Scott), who, bankrupt financially and morally, intends to wed his daughter to the richest suitor he can find. Birdy resists.

Loosely distilled from the novel by Karen Cushman, the movie is both adapted and directed by Lena Dunham who infuses the script with an spunky coming of age-ness and rich characterization with a screen full of with bright colors and simple shots (along with an apt soundtrack of kids-bop Gregorian Chants and modern pop-ballads). The dialog is often hard to hear but in moments of consequence shows flashes of radiance: a mix of modern ease with medieval poetry, with teenage (and parental) dramatics with lines that absolutely sing with earnestness. Best of all, the plot touches on more than just its protagonists experience, connecting her, and the audience, to a wide array of stories highborn and low, each keeping us guessing “how are they going to get out of this” and offering us no easy answers or comforting certainties. Each of them is working for a happy ending and we are putting our own shoulders to their struggles.

To speak truly, dear reader, I have a hard time judging the merits of child actors (“You are a child. You portrayed a child. Well done.”). But while Dunham may have handled Catherine one too many plates to juggle, I can say Ramsey slides on wet stockings between seriousness and the silliness of her character, at times naive and others near saintly. Her face is alive with feeling, her heart bleeds readily on her sleeve, and she gives the diaries narration with pompous relish.

But the real delight, beyond the whippings of the youth, are the adults, spinning like planets in the periphery of Birdy’s world We get wonderful bit characters like the carter known only as Northern Tiger (Ralph Ineson) or Ethelfritha (Sophie Okanado) a rich businesswoman whose eccentricities are at once enchanting and at times frightening. Key to the movie, and absolutely transcendent in performance are Scott and Billie Piper (as Lady Aislin, Birdie’s perpetually pregnant but tragedy hounded mother).

Scott is in his element as the filterless, bumbling, yet dangerous Lord Rollo. He is so hilariously inept (wrapping himself up in his robe, scrabbling for words like loose coin) and helpless in the face of his daughters antics but the intensity of his looks and words always keep us in mind of how much power he has over her, and we wait in terror for him to abuse it. But both he and Piper epitomize the view of parents as people and do much more than anyone else to show the invisible hand of patriarchy in their time and station: Aislin naively hoping for a good match for her daughter because that’s all she can do for her. and Rollo bitter and heart torn but doubling down about treating his daughter like property when he knows damn well she’s a person. The scene they have together in a moment of life or death near the end (the script does short shrift Piper but she makes the most of it) was heartrendingly beautiful in delivery and Scott’s transformation in the last act of the movie, when he stops making the “sensible” choices and starts doing the right ones is my favorite performance in the year thus far. My feelings about the movie itself are mixed (love the plotting and character could have used clearer dialog and tighter scenes) but Scott and Ramsey tighter is an alchemical mix for gold.