Lena Dunham considers herself a historian of her personal era. Because the creator of the HBO sequence “Women,” she grew to become a defining millennial voice, even when her work was at all times slightly tongue-in-cheek. However in her new movie, “Catherine Known as Birdy,” she turns her consideration to precise historical past. It’s an area the place she feels comfy. “I’m far more somebody who’s going to remain at residence and browse an odd medieval diary by, you realize, a milkmaid that was present in a pile of rubble than I’m apt to exit to a celebration in Williamsburg,” Dunham stated in a current telephone name.
An adaptation of Karen Cushman’s 1994 Newbery Medal-winning youngsters’s novel, “Birdy” is the story of a rebellious 14-year-old in medieval England (Bella Ramsey from “Recreation of Thrones”) whose father (Andrew Scott) needs to marry her off to maintain their household from slipping into poverty. Birdy does no matter she will be able to to thwart that effort, all of the whereas beginning on a tenuous path to emotional maturity. Regardless of the interval setting, it’s materials that rings very true to Dunham. Actually, she considers “Birdy” the third a part of a trilogy that began along with her breakout function, the semi-autobiographical “Tiny Furnishings” in 2010, and continued with “Sharp Stick,” a sexually specific saga a couple of 26-year-old virgin that was launched earlier this 12 months after debuting on the Sundance Movie Pageant.
“They’re all about completely different moments within the coming-of-age story,” she stated. Although these works happen in varied eras and settings, she added, “I hope that all of them supply a way of how difficult that second is, particularly for younger girls, and the way each invigorating and terrifying it’s and the best way that it type of cracks you open.”
Making “Birdy” has been a longtime aim for Dunham, 36, who first fell in love with the e-book as a baby. (She has six copies, she calculated.) She initially obtained the rights from the writer practically 10 years in the past. “‘Women’ had simply began and somebody requested, ‘In case you may adapt something right into a film, what would your dream be?’ and I don’t assume my reps on the time had been hoping that I might say a medieval YA story a couple of lady getting into into compelled marriage, however that’s what I did,” she recalled.
The rights for the e-book, which is written within the type of a diary, had been optioned as soon as earlier than. Nothing had ever come to fruition, Cushman stated in an interview, so when Dunham despatched a letter about her love for the e-book, the writer shortly stated sure.
Cushman, now 80, hadn’t but seen “Women” — she doesn’t have cable — however had watched “Tiny Furnishings,” which she discovered “so miserable.” The novelist defined, “I assumed she was wonderful at her younger age to do what she had accomplished, and I hoped she had through the years cheered up slightly after ‘Tiny Furnishings.’” (Dunham ultimately despatched Cushman discs of “Women.”)
Dunham lastly dug into writing her model of “Birdy” in 2019 after decamping to England to direct the pilot of HBO’s finance drama “Business” and discovering inspiration in scouting journeys to medieval landmarks. She was about to shoot the challenge in March 2020 when the pandemic shut down manufacturing. Feeling the urge to create after that disappointment, Dunham threw herself into writing the Los Angeles-set “Sharp Stick,” during which the sheltered heroine has an affair along with her married boss that sends her on a spiral of sexual exploration.
“‘Sharp Stick’ is my most complex, possibly least business instincts and ‘Birdy’ is, hopefully in a optimistic manner, making an attempt to inform a populist story, however they’re each asking the identical questions,” she stated. Having “Sharp Stick” to discover her most provocative facet, nevertheless, allowed Dunham to “pull again” in sure methods when it got here to her follow-up. Part of her, she stated, might need wished to dig deeper into the ugliness of medieval society in “Birdy” greater than she in the end did. As a substitute she was content material along with her protagonist’s extra harmless viewpoint.
Earlier than making “Birdy,” Dunham met her now-husband, the British-Peruvian musician Luis Felber, and began spending extra time in Britain. Going into the challenge, she was a self-described “embarrassing Anglophile” to the diploma that she wished a Brontë-themed bachelorette get together. (“It didn’t find yourself occurring,” she defined. “It’s a lot more durable to have a bachelorette get together on the moors than you’ll assume.”)
Nonetheless, she was cautious to put aside a few of her romanticism for the needs of the movie, which evenly touches on the horrors of British historical past just like the Crusades. Dunham labored alongside the medieval scholar Helen Castor to grasp the nuances of the interval whereas diverging from the historic file when she noticed match. An instance: The rating by Carter Burwell, sung by the group Roomful of Tooth, invokes choral music, whereas the soundtrack is full of Misty Miller’s covers of pop songs like Supergrass’s “Alright” and Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You.”
Dunham’s model of the thirteenth century, which she crafted alongside the manufacturing designer Kave Quinn and costume designer Julian Day, is full of coloration and flowers — “one step away from Coachella,” in keeping with Dunham. The aim was costumes that had been each traditionally acceptable and enjoyable sufficient to seize the eyes of ladies on the lookout for their subsequent Halloween costume.
That knack for understanding ascendant womanhood served Dunham effectively when it got here to collaborating with Ramsey, the 18-year-old who performs Birdy. “I feel she understands what it was to be a teenage lady who didn’t match the mildew of a teenage lady,” Ramsey stated of Dunham. “She knew what it was prefer to really feel issues deeply and never know methods to categorical them.”
“Catherine Known as Birdy” is well Dunham’s most family-friendly work and by extension her most accessible. Mother and father might be assured there are not any unprintable intercourse acts, though there are discussions of menstruation and farting. For Scott, the actor finest referred to as the hunky priest on “Fleabag,” who performs Birdy’s typically sloshed father, Rollo, it’s a manner for audiences to see part of Dunham that will have been hidden in her extra boundary-pushing materials. “I really like the truth that this movie is so stuffed with coronary heart,” he stated. “I really like the truth that that facet of her is one thing that folks can acknowledge now.”
Dunham is aware of “Birdy” will most likely nonetheless be in contrast with “Women,” however she’s grateful it took a couple of decade to get made. These years of life expertise meant she may flesh out the world across the spunky teen on the film’s middle, whether or not that be Birdy’s mom’s a number of stillbirths or the heartbreak endured by her finest buddy. “I really feel fortunate there’s slightly little bit of house in order that hopefully this film, which I care a lot about and which feels in so some ways just like the fruits to this point of my life’s work, may have an opportunity to face by itself,” she stated. She simply needs viewers to fall in love with this story the identical manner she did all these years in the past.