Film Reviews - Cathering Called Birdy and Rosalind

[shadowkat]

Nope, no side-effects, except for sore arm.

Kind of crashed today, outside of a side trip to Foodtown to pick up groceries.

Watched two flicks adapted from books, released first in theaters then on streaming:

1. Catherine Called Birdy - directed/produced/and adapted screenplay by Lena Durham.

Mother: How was it?
Me: I fell asleep during it.
Mother: So not that great?
Me: I liked the ending well enough, also could follow it rather well, without any rewinding considering I dosed off during about thirty minutes of it.

It's badly paced. Also it's a coming of age tale about a fourteen year old girl (set during medieval times) who is trying to dodge an arranged marriage set up by her loving father to an old codger to get money.

Me: There's the gay male best friend trope. Which is in all of these movies now. And I'm not sure it works with the medieval setting.
Mother: When is this set?
Me: Medieval Times (as in 1212 or the 13th Century).
Mother: You're right - that is odd. Although there were rulers back then that were, but if they were open about it..they'd probably be killed.
Me: Exactly - especially considering Religion was King back then.

There's also a lot of African women in the film - and I'm not certain they'd have been married to English Landowners in the 13th Century. It's not that I don't appreciate the diversity - I do. But this was the 13th Century - it was hard to get around back then. And people back then were even more bigoted, superstitious, and nasty to outsiders than they are now. Maybe the Uncle, who has brought his wife back from the Crusades. But it jarred me, personally, and took me out of the movie.

I may be wrong about this - since I'm neither a historian nor a medievalist - but I'd think this film would be jarring to people who are? It felt very modern to me, with the exception of arranged marriages for 14year olds in exchange for money - that's very 13th Century.

All of that said, some strong performances, an appealing lead, and an unrecognizable Billie Piper as the mother. (I honestly did not recognize her until I saw the credits.)

This is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

2. Rosalind - film is by 20th Century Fox, and currently streaming on Hulu. Also it was in theaters too apparently for a blink of an eye. Has a decent enough cast, I guess. But is rather...dumb?

Apparently somebody out there doesn't like Romeo and Juliet? Because this kind of skewers the play and trope. It's about Rosalind, the woman that Romeo was obsessed with before he ran into Juliette at a party and fell in love with her, or they fell for each other.

Prior to meeting Juliet, Romeo is busy romancing Rosalind, who enjoys it and fancies herself in love with him, except she's a bit smarter than he is, and Juliet for that matter. When he preaches undying love, and states how lovely things will be when they are living together in the country, where she's tending his house and raising the kids, while he concentrates on his poetry.

Rosalind: Uh, wait a minute. You're going to be writing poetry while I'm changing the diapers? That's how you see us?
Romeo: Yeah, what's wrong with that? I love you, don't you love me?
Rosaling: ...

They kind break up right there. But she's discombobulated about it. And not sure what happened. She convinces him to meet up with her at the Capulet Ball and they can dance, have fun, and work things out there.

Meanwhile her father keeps thrusting men at her - to marry. The latest is a hot Venetian Solider, recently returned from War intact. Dario. Who basically makes Romeo look like a wet behind the ears school boy. (I'm thinking, Rosalind forget about Romeo and grab this dude, he's much better.)

Rosalind is too busy worrying over Romeo moving on to Juliet to notice.

Mother: So what is it about?
Me: It's kind of Taming of the Shrew meets Rome & Juliet by way of My Best Friend's Wedding..
Mother: That's an odd combination.
Me: Yep, and I don't think it quite works.

I gave up half-way through - because I got bored. Called mother. Then came back to it. It's a bit too contemporary for the time-period. Rosalind basically gives all the speeches that Paris did in the play, and Paris is "gay" in this version. Once again we have the "gay best friend" motif.
I'd have gone for Mercutio over Paris being gay - but that admittedly wouldn't have worked for the plot.

The second half is slightly better than the first half. But a lot of it felt thrown together. And rushed. As if the actors were being told to do this and to do that - and they rushed to do it. And that's the take that they used. I can almost see their reactions to the film..."Wait, you used that shot? Really? I was phoning it in - I thought that was the dress rehearsal shot." Which can be a problem with film - if rushed, the filmmaker will often take the shot that works best in regards to lighting, etc.

I say that because there's a scene at the end in which all the actors have delayed reaction times. And many are veteran screen actors.

Christopher George (Capulet): Is there a Doctor in the house? I want proof.
Minnie Driver (after a pause) - I am.
Rosalind's father: wait are you qualified?
Minnie Driver: I'm a bloody registered nurse.
Rosalind's Father: I thought that was just your name.

This would have been funnier - if the exchange was faster. It's delivered kind of slowly, with delayed reaction time, which is kind of jarring.

I think the movie was meant to be a rom-com, but it didn't make me laugh.

It's okay, but not recommended. I was rather disappointed by it to be honest.


Of the two - Catherine Called Birdy was slightly better. Both had pacing issues and both were disappointing in my opinion.

Comments

[conuly]

And people back then were even more bigoted, superstitious, and nasty to outsiders than they are now.

Are you basing this statement on evidence, or on a vague belief that things generally tend to improve over time, so therefore, if we're bigoted today they must have been more bigoted (and about the same sorts of things) in the past?

We have records of non-white landowners in Medieval England.

[shadowkat]

I can't point to a factual record, and granted there's no way of knowing for certain, but on histories that I've read and studied - it was clear that if it didn't follow the dictates of Rome - it was not permitted. (I was a cultural anthropology major, so I studied a lot of the pre and post Roman studies.). Also in artwork at the time. The deaths recorded and the cause. They had a lot of warfare back then. (Read the Bible - that is one nasty little book regarding how people treated each other). Also the Roman Invasion of Britain in 1066. Also human nature through history - establishes a clear pattern. Artwork from the period - which is heavily white and specific towards a certain beauty trope in the British Isles. The marital practices of the time. The slavery practices - they tended to enslave whomever lost the wars.

It was called the Dark Ages for the reason.

Also there's no factual recordings or evidence that exists they weren't - if anything the historical recordings, stories, writings, etc that exist suggest the opposite.

There are recorded superstitions. Often local medicine women and mid-wifes were put to death as "witches" by the Church. The Church killed anyone who was pagan or went against it's dictate. The Church ruled the land back then - it was the time of The Holy Roman Empire - and they weren't nice people.

It was a dark time. If you look back through the historical recordings - human beings have been monsters to each other for over a thousand years. The Romans crucified people prior to AD. They hung people, chopped off their heads, ran them through with swords. Tortured them on the rack. Have you seen some of the Medieval Torture Devices? Ugh.

[conuly]

It was called the Dark Ages for the reason.

Historians don't call it that, for pretty much this reason. Edit: Had to double check to confirm, but the phrase doesn't have to do with morals or science anyway. The people who started using that term simply meant that we don't have many surviving records from that time. Which is beside the point, but still.

There are recorded superstitions. Often local medicine women and midwives were put to death as "witches" by the Church. The Church killed anyone who was pagan or went against its dictate.

Which sucks, but isn't the same as racial bigotry based on skin color in the modern sense, which appears to be what you were alluding to. Edit: Double checked, eeep, neglected to quote far enough back in my first comment. Still, we're back to "The view that things just get worse the further back in time you go cannot be supported".

Edit again: It took me about half an hour, because I got distracted, but I have confirmed what I thought when I first read your comment - burnings of suspected "witches", heretics, and others is primarily something we see in the modern period, peaking during the Reformation. Protestants were much more enthusiastic about witch-burnings than Catholics. The Inquisitions in Spain and Portugal, iirc (not double checking because this isn't the medieval period and therefore isn't relevant) were more worried about Jews.

The Romans crucified people prior to AD.

That's not the Middle Ages, and not relevant.

[shadowkat]

What are the sources you are quoting?

It's controversial, but I don't see any evidence that it wasn't as racially biased as our current century. This was the era of the Holy Roman Empire and the Crusades. Of Kings and Queens, and feudalism. People didn't own their homes or land, the landowners had tenant farmers, indebted to them. I honestly think it was possibly worse than it is now - due to the lack of education across the masses. This was the era in which masses were done primarily in latin.

Keep in mind in 1492 - Columbus sailed to the Americas and was responsible for the deaths and enslavement of natives.

During the Middle Ages, torture was considered a successful way to extract information. Go HERE AND HERE.

Granted we had Thomas Aquinas. But unlike modern times, education was limited back then.

"In the Middle Ages, this was not the case. Only the wealthy had access to education, and then usually only for boys. There were no public schools, and those who had the privilege of getting an education usually either learned at home with a tutor or from a school run by the church. Because of this, religion informed every subject that students learned. Some of the things that students learned then we might consider to be superstitions today.

What did students study in the middle ages? All kinds of things! Just like today they learned math and grammar (or, the study of language) as well as music, art, and science. And, they played sports like archery, hammer-throwing, horseshoes, and wrestling.

Unlike today, most subjects centered around theology (or, the study of religion). There were also colleges and universities in the middle ages. Though, very few students got to attend, unlike today."

Education in the Middle Ages

When scholars state it was a time of cultural renewal - they mean for the wealthy, and male upper classes.

In regards to Racism, while scholars argue that the "word" and general concept of "Racism" is a modern term, it does not mean that it people in medieval times didn't discriminate based on religion or other identifiers or wouldn't have ostracized based on skin color or nation of origin.

Accordingly, the treatment of Jews marks medieval England as the first racial state in the history of the West. Church and state laws produced surveillance, tagging, herding, incarceration, legal murder, and expulsion. A popular story of Jews killing Christian boys evolved over centuries, showing how changes in popular culture helped create the emerging communal identity of England. England’s 1275 Statute of Jewry even mandated residential segregation for Jews and Christians, inaugurating what would seem to be the beginning of the ghetto in Europe; and England’s expulsion of its Jews in 1290 marks the first permanent expulsion of Jews in Europe.

Similarly, Muslims in medieval Europe were transformed from military enemies into non-humans. The renowned theologian, Bernard of Clairvaux, who co-wrote the Rule for the Order of the Templars, announced that the killing of a Muslim wasn’t actually homicide, but malicide—the extermination of incarnated evil, not the killing of a person. Muslims, Islam, and the Prophet were vilified in numerous creative ways, and the extraterritorial incursions we call the Crusades coalesced into an indispensable template for Europe’s later colonial empires of the modern eras.

Go Here.

Even fellow Christians could be racialized. Literature justifying England’s colonization of Ireland in the twelfth century depicted the Irish as a quasi-human, savage, infantile, and bestial race—a racializing strategy in England’s colonial domination of Ireland that echoes from the medieval through the early modern period four centuries later.

In reading the articles? I think it is a matter of interpretation? From what I'm reading - Were Medieval People Racist? - yes, they were. The question is were they more racist than we are now? No. About the same.

I think the difficulty arises in that we get caught up in the label. Just like today, not everyone in the Medieval Times was racist. Quite a few weren't. Just as not everyone was misogynistic and/or sexist. Or homophobic. But we're also talking about a time period that ninety percent of the population had no access to education. And most didn't travel very far. And religion was in charge.
So the question is were the people in charge racist?

Some were, some weren't.

I'm guessing you loved Catherine Called Birdy? I fell asleep during it.

[conuly]

This was the era in which masses were done primarily in latin.

What is the relevance here? The masses were primarily done in Latin up until the 1960s. This enabled people to participate in Mass no matter where they were, even if they were traveling to a strange place where people spoke a different language. The sermons, however, were done in the vernacular. What does this have to do with your claim that people in the middle ages were more bigoted etc. than they are today?

During the Middle Ages, torture was considered a successful way to extract information. Go HERE AND HERE.

Torture is widely considered a successful way to extract information today. Go anywhere online where they're talking about popular fiction or games that involve torture ("enhanced interrogation") and tell them that it's not a good way to get information. You'll see them pouring out of the woodwork to tell you that it is.

The fact that people in the Middle Ages did torture does not show that people back then were more bigoted than they are today, given that we also do torture, including many forms of torture that we don't necessarily call torture, such as extended solitary confinement.

The question is were they more racist than we are now? No. About the same.

I was specifically disagreeing with your claim in your previous comment that they were more so.

I'm guessing you loved Catherine Called Birdy? I fell asleep during it.

I don't know why you'd think I have an opinion on it. I haven't even mentioned it, nor watched it. I read the book once as a child.

[shadowkat]

I assumed it - because the post was a film review of Catherine Called Birdy and not the Middle Ages?

I am willing to agree that they are not necessarily "more" bigoted than we are now. And changed the post to fit that caveat.

Thank you for pointing that out.

Have a nice week.

[petzipellepingo]

I watched the second one and was bored.

[shadowkat]

It was very boring. I found myself doing other things during it.

[mtbc]

Hmmm, I was planning to give Catherine Called Birdy a try, good to know to temper my expectations. Though, I'll have to wait anyway, Filipino Amazon Prime doesn't seem to include it.

[shadowkat]

You might enjoy it more than I did? I found it kind of slow and very YA.

[mtbc]

Heh, that doesn't augur well, I'd been hoping that a bit of wit in the dialog might redeem it! I guess I'll see someday.