REVISITING 1983's TV MINI-SERIES : THE THORN BIRDS

Hi Friends,

How have you been? Trust you're doing fine and I do hope that my posts are making for a good read in your leisure time! :) Though, I wish I'd hear more from you and the topics you'd like to read on my blog.

Anyway getting on with this month's post, here's another television series I thought that I'd recommend which I came to love and like always happened to discover rather late in the day. 

 A forbidden love story...

This television series is a unique love story based on Colleen Mccullough's best seller novel, The Thorn Birds. Though I've not had the chance to read the book but when I watched the adaptation on the small screen starring Richard Chamberlain, Rachel Ward and Christopher Plummer, I can well imagine what a romantic and passionate novel I missed out from my reading list! If you have a watch-list, then you might as well add this one right away!

In fact the byline of this story is very intriguing and reads - "Love Unattainable, Forbidden Forever."(For those hopeless romantics looking for a happy ending,you might as well stop right here.) Though it's not a thriller but still I choose to call it 'intriguing' because you sure want to know why is love both unattainable and forbidden? What could be the nature of the relationship that the protagonists share that theirs can never be a happy ending? What is the complexity or impediment in the way of their relationship? Who is the villain of this piece? Is it a person, a virtue or what? 

Alright...I'll end your agony right here and give you a premise of the story at the same time without revealing it all.

                              (****Spoilers Ahead****)

For starters, The Thorn Birds is a saga about forbidden love between a priest and a young girl and a turbulent relationship spanning three decades that oscillates between love, ambition, struggle and the eventual tragedy that unfold in their lives. 

I'll elaborate it a little more for those of you who wish to be more acquainted with the plot of this mini-series. Ralph de Bricassart is an ambitious priest torn between his love for the Church and his passion for Meggie, a spirited young girl whom he has loved ever since she was a child when her family came to live at her aunt's estate in Drohgeda. 

After all she was not dying...

At first, Ralph and Meggie's relationship is that of like a father towards a child, he is very protective and concerned about her well-being because being the only daughter among three sons, her parents hardly even know of her existence in the family. It is when she comes under Ralph's care that she begins to embrace life, comes to have an education and exchange meaningful discourses with Ralph, the man whom she loves so dearly and forever. In fact, she is so sure of her feelings for him that even as a child she wishes to marry him when she grows up! 

Ralph tending to Meggie gently by her side

Of course, as the story progresses the plot thickens with Ralph being promoted and sent away to the Vatican, thanks to the will of Meggie's scheming aunt, Mary Carson. With Ralph's prolonged absence from Drohgeda she seeks love in the man in whom she sees Ralph and eventually marries him only to realize that he, like Ralph was too ambitious to love her and make her a home. In the midst of all this prevailing tension, Meggie is pregnant and prematurely gives birth to a baby girl not before a complicated delivery where she is battling between life and death and it is not her husband but Ralph tending to her gently by her side. Finally old lovers unite...but at what cost? I won't spoil it for you...now it's time for you to watch the other half to know what happens next!

Fee, matriarch of the Cleary family

What I liked about this series was firstly the casting, Richard Chamberlain was perfect for the part and a versatile actor indeed especially the way he molded himself to play the man torn between his spiritual ambitions and carnal desires...it was absolutely convincing! (For a moment, seeing him in his papal robes I had even begun imagining him to play Thomas Becket if Becket was ever to be remade, of course it's too late now that he is old). Rachel Ward as the heart-broken Meggie yearning for love was endearing while Jean Simmons as Fee Cleary saw the coming of a staunch matriarch particularly the respect she commands in her family and comes of her own after her husband's death, the silence and dignity with which she handles the spate of tragedies unfolding before her very own eyes and managing the day-to-day affairs of Drohgeda estate.

As fierce as a lion(ess): Mary Carson

The strongest and the most independent character I saw in this series was the old Mary Carson played by Barbara Stanwyck. She was fierce as a lioness all the way, particularly in the scene where she tears apart Ralph for not loving her and the plans she had made to destroy him was one of the few defining moments of this series. And I am not surprised that this series, both Richard Chamberlain and Barbara Stanwyck took home the Golden Globes that year! I also loved the background score of the series particularly the music that plays when Ralph and Meggie are in the frame....there's somewhere an element of sadness to it.It resonates a deep sense of love, pain, longing and separation.

When I just mentioned of moments some paragraphs earlier, I was reminded of some memorable conversations between Ralph and Meggie that struck a chord in my heart.

In fact one of the most innocent conversations I've ever seen was between young Meggie and Father Ralph when she is going through a vulnerable phase of her growing up years -

Young Meggie: Father I'm dying...

Father Ralph: [concerned at first and later beams with joy when he understands the situation] My precious girl, you're not dying, you're growing up!

Young Meggie: [happy and relieved to know that she's not dying] Oh Father. I'm so glad I'm not dying.What would I ever do without you?

Father Ralph: Oh silly. You'll never be without me.

Another moment I loved was when Ralph and Meggie reunite together in Greece,he finally confesses his love for her after feeling utterly responsible for all that she had been through because of him when he  says - "My punishment is never to be sure again that I love God more than you."

And for a change, I loved the scene when Meggie shows strength,confronts her husband in front of all his friends and ticks him off saying, "You complacent, conceited, self-centered bastard! You can't make love for toffee!"   

Attagirl!!

Vittorio & Ralph: Sharing a camaraderie 

I also loved the understanding and equation that Ralph shares with Archbishop Vittorio (played by Christopher Plummer, another piece of excellent casting).He knows Ralph so well that even without him uttering a word about his life and Meggie, he looks at Ralph and reads into his soul only to find deep pain, suffering and longing in the countenance of the man whose presence is with God but his heart is with someone else.

When Ralph and Archbishop Vittorio are sitting in the garden and Vittorio is trying to get Ralph to talk and probe more about him something that he's not found yet; the answer comes to Vittorio that very moment when Ralph's Bible falls and there's a dried rose in it. 

Vittorio picks up the rose and smells it saying, "How lovely! Still the faintest fragrance. I kept a rose many years from my mother..." 

Ralph replies, "I want no memories of my mother. No...'This' was the sacrifice." 

[This was the same rose that Meggie had given Ralph after the fire at Drohgeda when everything turned to cinders at the farm and some of Meggie's family perished in it but this was the lone rose that survived, perhaps an indication that it was her life in the rose.]

Here are some more heartwarming moments between the two of them:

Archbishop Vittorio Contini-Verchese: When your rose fell to the ground, I understood at last, the sadness you always wear like a holy mantle.

Ralph: I've tried so hard to get her out of my heart

Archbishop Vittorio Contini-Verchese: You think I don't know that. Ralph, our God has given us free will and with that gift comes that burden of choice. It is time, far past time that you took up that burden because until you do you cannot go on.

Ralph: But sending me back to where she is, is like asking me to fail.

Archbishop Vittorio Contini-Verchese: No, it's asking you to choose.

Of forbidden love, ambition & tragedy: The saga of The Thorn Birds

And I also love the story of The Thorn Bird that Ralph tells Meggie as a child and the second time an old Meggie narrates the story to Ralph before he dies. I shall revisit that story here - 

Father Ralph: [narrating the legend of the thorn bird to Meggie] There's a story...a legend, about a bird that sings just once in its life. From the moment it leaves its nest, it searches for a thorn tree...and never rests until it's found one. And then it sings...more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. And singing, it impales itself on the longest, sharpest thorn. But, as it dies, it rises above its own agony, to out-sing the lark and the nightingale. The thorn bird pays its life for just one song, but the whole world stills to listen, and God in his heaven smiles.
Young Meggie: What does it mean, Father?
Father Ralph: That the best... is bought only at the cost of great pain.

(I think the story of this unique bird sums up what The Thorn Birds is all about!)

Finally if there's one thing that I didn't like about this series was the pace of the narrative particularly in the last episode where it witnessed a direct jump of nineteen years (there were some missing unexplained years, however I believe there's another part to this series to elucidate the same) and all of a sudden everyone was old with some major drama unfolding in quick succession in the lives of the third generation of the Cleary family. 

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Hope you enjoyed reading this month's post! I'm sure that I'm not the only one who love watching this series, so I look forward to reading your notes and thoughts in the comments section below!

Love,

Sonyaa