Birdsong is a two-part 2012 television drama, based on the 1993
war novel Birdsong by
Sebastian Faulks. (
Wikipedia)
An English soldier fights in the horrific trenches of northern France, he is haunted by the memories of his forbidden love affair with a French woman.
(IMDB page)
My Youtube video playlist contains trailers and fanmade videos.
"There is nothing more, sir, than to love and be loved"
'You feel responsible portraying one of these war heroes'
Eddie Redmayne on filming Birdsong ahead of drama's US debut ( x )
In preparation for their roles Eddie Redmayne and Joseph Mawle visited La Boisselle
to gain an understanding of the environment and conditions faced by tunnellers working beneath the Picardy battlefields.
(article with photos)
... they then went underground through the crown hole that gave access to the 1915 X Incline. They descended to a depth of about 30 feet, reaching the site of the now celebrated poem written in pencil on the chalk roof:
If in this place you are detained
Don’t look around you all in vain
But cast your net and you shall find
That every cloud is silver lined… Still
In recent interviews Eddie revealed that he wrote the poem, which he described as “hope in the most horrific of circumstances”, on the cover of his script as an inspiration for the role, and as a reminder of the tunnellers and their work in the Glory Hole at La Boisselle.
Interview: 'Birdsong' Eddie Redmayne Q&A: 'Reading the novel blew my mind'
How would you sum up Birdsong - it's part love story, part war drama..."What I always go back to is... I read somewhere that Sebastian originally called it Flesh and Blood and it feels to me like it's the most extraordinary exploration of life. My character goes through so many different levels - grief, loss - and they're all different types of grief.
"Stephen's got to be strong, but still - when does one become immune to death? And then it's the same with sex and passion - it begins as something carnal, and then it moves into something playful. This idea of discovering humanity in extremes is what I found amazing about the book, and I hope we've touched on that."
The Observer interview: Eddie Redmayne: 'Come February, the world will be sick of my face'The actor has triumphed in the cinema with My Week with Marilyn, commanded the stage as Richard II and is about to explode on to our TV screens in Birdsong.
...Birdsong is that rare thing: a screen adaptation of a book that is not a pale approximation. Redmayne is chilling in the lead role, while Morgan ingeniously weaves between the two main settings of the novel: genteel France in 1910 and the country, ravaged by war, in 1916...."It was very odd on set, like two different films," says Redmayne. "We shot the war stuff first on this huge field outside Budapest with the most astounding rabbit-warren trenches, and it was incredibly hot and intense. But it was in Budapest and you had all the boys, this amazing collection of British actors like Matthew Goode and Thomas Turgoose, and – of course, they had days on and days off – so they were out on the lash in Budapest. I felt like the depressingly boring dad, living last night's action vicariously through them. "Then they all left after this hardcore six weeks, and these beautiful French actors arrived," he continues. "It became this European period drama, so make-up off, mud off and suddenly into these starched ties. Philip [Martin] and I were like, 'What's happening here?'"
Putting on a brave front: Behind the scenes of the BBC's epic adaptation of 'Birdsong'
article by Sam Peters published in The Independent on Jan 15, 2012
 |
| by Kalpesh Lathingra |
Eddie Redmayne played Stephen Wraysford, the introverted hero who walks the trenches of the worst war that ever happened as if he were already dead, with total absorption. He gave the part both an aloof melancholy and the sense that his insides had been ripped out. He also gave it drop dead beauty.
03.jpg)
05.jpg)
03.jpg)
05.jpg)
Sources of the pics from Eddie's project: Black Death, Birdsong, Jupiter Ascending - Sean Bean, Like Minds,
