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March 13, 2007

Ferdy at the Movies - I Still Don't Get the Bit About the Suicidal Bird

Occasionally, one of my female human pets buys or rents a chick film on DVD, and Bruce insists on watching it on the grounds that he can then rate the DVD on Netflix and get better recommendations from the web site's software.

It is for this reason that I was forced to endure an eight-hour horror film called The Thorn Birds.

The movie stars Richard Chamberlain as a priest who has a special love relationship with a girl over a 50-year period. The girl is played by Sidney Penny while she's a teenager and by Rachel Ward when she's all grown up.

Call me crazy, but there is something seriously wrong with a guy who lusts after a woman young enough to be his daughter. Ladies, please note: a guy who likes 20-year-old women is still going to like 20-year-old women when you're a 30-year-old woman. That's why Phil Hartman is no longer with us.

In the Thorn Birds, the guy with the younger-woman problem is also a priest. For God's sake (and I mean that literally), this world has way too many lusty priests as it is. We don't need to make romantic heroes out of them.

But it's worse than that.

There is a point in the film where the lusty priest spends a couple of weeks doing a romantic getaway with his dream girl-child, after which he decides he wants to go back to the church. This is tacky, but I can almost buy it. What completely freaked me out is the two of them meet again many years later and they hop right into the sack. Excuse me, Mr. Lusty Priest, but being welcomed back into the church is supposed to involve repentance. It's not a PERMANENT GET-OUT-OF-JAIL-FREE CARD.

Periodically, the characters in the movie talk about a mythical bird that impales itself on a thorn, making the most beautiful sound in the world as it dies. For a while, I thought that this was some sort of metaphor about the relationship between the priest and the girl: they make beautiful music together but they must remain apart. That idea completely falls apart because of the in-the-sack reunion. In my mind, I'm trying to imagine the conversation that preceded the scene with the two of them in bed again:

Oh hi, Meggie! How nice to see you again! I'm trying to get the Church to make me a cardinal. Did you bring a condom?

Beautiful music it ain't.

Let's get down to brass tacks here. I don't want to see this guy suffer because he doesn't realize he had a son until it's too late. I want him defrocked as soon as the girl gets pregnant and forced to do hard labor in a Third World Country so he can earn the money to make child support payments! It's not a romantic ending, but it would sure as heck be a big win for the Church.

Anyway, if you want a real romance about a clergyman who's worth waiting for and doesn't abuse a vow of chastity, rent Mansfield Park. And the next time somebody tells you about The Thorn Birds, keep this in mind: killing a bird in order to make a beautiful song is not a metaphor for star-crossed lovers, it's a waste of perfectly good food.

Trust me. That sort of thing is my bread-and-butter.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat

# At Tue 3:42 AM | Permalink | Trackback URI | Comments (2) | More Ferdy at the Movies | Tags: Catholicism conservative Mansfield Park movies poultry Richard Chamberlain romance The Thorn Birds

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Posted by: Suldog at March 13, 2007 9:36 AM

Posted by: Right Jokester at March 14, 2007 8:09 AM