BEFORE: I'm trying to get back into some form of rhythm, after 9 days on the road and living out of hotels in North Carolina, going out for almost every meal and living on a schedule that resembles what most people do, which is get up early and eat three meals a day, and get to bed at a reasonable time. That just doesn't work for me, as I'm used to working late at the theater, getting take-out at about 9 pm and getting home at midnight or 1 am, then staying up to watch a movie and sleeping late the next day. I don't know how most people get up early five days a week, but I guess they appreciate their weekends even more than I do - and I guess I don't tend to appreciate what an easy schedule I have, even though it doesn't feel easy at all.
Jacki Weaver carries over from "Stoker".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Starling" (Movie #4,283)
THE PLOT: A family takes in an injured magpie that makes a profound difference in their lives.
AFTER: I'm still coming down from the whole Mother's Day thing, it's best to transition slowly out of that perhaps. From the synopsis I probably would not have pegged this as a mother-based film, but sure, it can be that if you want it to be. Sam is a mother of three who suffers an injury while on vacation in Thailand with her family and breaks her back, which paralyzes her from the waist down. The other option for the family vacation was to go to Disneyland, so I suspect that this film was secretly funded by the Walt Disney Corp, to foster the take-away that going on vacation to a Disney Park is much safer than going someplace else, where perhaps the structural components of the average rooftop are not being maintained as well. I think that maybe that's correct, though, because some quick Googling informs me that 29 people died at Disney Land between 2010 and 2023, while nearly 600,000 people died in Thailand in just 2022. There you go, Disney is therefore much safer.
But this was also part of that weird trend a couple years ago to make bird-centric films, there was also "The Starling" and, umm, "The Goldfinch" and I'm sure there were others that I'm just not remembering at the moment. "Angry Birds", "Happy Feet", and "Rio", maybe? "Birds of Prey", JK.
The film is based on a book, a true story about a family's interactions with an injured magpie that fell out of a tree near their Australian home, and once you realize the parallel between the bird's injury and the mother's injury, this really does seem like the most obvious metaphor ever. You can't even really call it symbolism, because the bird and the mother have like the SAME injury, it's too blatant of a connection to even count, it's just the same thing happening to two characters in the same story. But the family bonds over caring for this bird, which they name penguin even though it is NOT a penguin, and over time some form of healing and understanding takes place, though there are still some messy emotions and guilt to deal with regarding the accident.
It's really not enough to hold my attention, but there are some valid points to be made here about how people feel and behave around sick family members or injured people. Like, can the other family members go out and have a good time while the matriarch is in pain, or undergoing P.T. or just having a down day because she doesn't feel like she'll ever walk again? My sister's family is going through something like this, now that my parents are living in the same house, and they're not always in the best of health, they could be sick or not having a good day or recovering from something, but still life has to go on in the house, teenagers have to go to school or dance class or volleyball practice, and everyone's schedules need to be organized because everyone has to be picked up or dropped off or taken to various doctor's appointments. So, really all my sister seems to do all day is drive people around, while I don't have kids so I don't have to do any of that. Now I maybe feel a little guilty, because she's also taking care of my parents and I'm not doing any of that work, but that's why we drove down there last week, to spend a few days watching my parents during the day so she could drive her kids around and not worry about our parents being unsupervised.
Sure, there will be tough days and bad things may happen, here represented by Sam's depression and Penguin getting attacked by two larger birds after the family brought their bird with them when they visited Sam's mother. Umm, maybe you could leave your bird at home once in a while and not bring it with you EVERYWHERE. Just saying.
Also, when Penguin goes away for a few weeks after being attacked, how do they KNOW it's the same bird when it comes back? I mean, couldn't it just be another magpie, because all birds of the same species seem to you know, look exactly the same? As proof of this, Penguin was played by 10 different magpies over the course of this film, and they all look exactly the same on film - if I didn't tell you that, you wouldn't even know. In the end, not really a ground-breaking story here, I mean the takeaway here is that a family once owned a bird that they liked. Big freakin' deal. How much of an inconvenience was it for them to keep their house clean, with a wild bird walking loose through it all day long?
Also starring Naomi Watts (last seen in "Boss Level"), Andrew Lincoln (last seen in "Love Actually"), Griffin Murray-Johnston, Felix Cameron, Abe Clifford-Barr, Rachel House (last heard in "Soul"), Leeanna Walsman, Lisa Hensley, Gia Carides (last seen in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2"), Essi Murray-Johnston.
RATING: 5 out of 10 broken picture frames
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