The Refreshingly Cinematic Tale Of ‘Birdman’
A mini-analysis
Although frustrating, watching this gorgeously crazy film with a mall-audience stuffing themselves with nachos made it an interesting experience. Sometimes it felt like the satire was addressing the people who left the cinema early, even more than to me who could watch films about films forever — “People, they love blood. They love action. Not this talky, depressing, philosophical bullshit.” The superhero title might have set the wrong expectations for some, which I find a hilarious trick, if it actually worked!
It’s a tough subject to attract audiences to — an actor’s identity crisis who grows more unable to silence his destructive ego — hard for people to empathize if they have no clue what goes on behind a role. That’s why taking on a popular form, at least on the surface, is always a good “spoonful of sugar” to get audiences to experience something other than what they already know and are comfortable with.
Before praising its content, I want to talk about the breathlessness of the cinematography. It’s so refreshing to see new explorations of cinematic time (Boyhood is an even more astounding experiment to do so) and it is no surprise that these films are considered some of the best of 2014. If we think of the profound differences between silent cinema film grammar and of any blockbuster after the 70s, you see how audiences have adapted to “read” film faster. But the past decade has sped up in an uninteresting way, it’s just fast and CGI-zed, without really changing the structure of this filmic grammar. Here, however, cinematographer Lubezki’s seemingly one long take does not overlap with the real time of the action (like in Hitchock’s Rope or Sokurov’s Russian Ark), but actually offers ellipses inside the long takes. No longer does the editing cut between today and tomorrow, but time passes in front of our eyes and we don’t have trouble understanding that. This is the stuff cinema is made of. Experiments like these (and also of Grand Budapest Hotel, which switches film formats to be historically and technically accurate), are what help cinema keep its magic in spite of the growing brilliance of TV and Youtube’s immediacy.
OK, back to the story. Very intelligent choice of New York City as location, it being not only a high-art theatre capital but also very close to film, as the public is accustomed to seeing sets and having their streets blocked for movies. Which is why, when Riggan “flies” on top of a building, a woman shouts from the opposite roof “is this real or are you shooting a film?”. A poignant moment of scriptwriting, one of my favourites in the whole of Birdman.
Another aspect that shines through is the fact that it doesn’t just show Riggan’s ego issues, but also his colleagues’ insecurities (in spite of being on Broadway) and even the critic’s less evident vice of self-aggrandisement. The plot being anchored in our reality of hyper-connected social media presence, Riggan’s daughter sums up the roots of his fears, like a fed up therapist who wants her patient to finally “get it”.
“Let’s face it, Dad, it’s not for the sake of art. It’s because you want to feel relevant again. Well, there’s a whole world out there where people fight to be relevant every day. Who are you? You hate bloggers. You make fun of Twitter. You don’t even have a Facebook page. You’re the one who doesn’t exist. You’re doing this because you’re scared to death, like the rest of us, that you don’t matter. And you know what? You’re right. You don’t. It’s not important. You’re not important. Get used to it.”
The problem with social media is that we give it the power to create our image and we assume we are identical to that image. If you don’t have Facebook, you don’t exist and the more Youtube views you have, the more power you have. However, in Riggan’s dressing room there is a mantra that he cannot seem to truly own: “a thing is a thing, not what is said of that thing.” Ironically, it’s glued to his mirror, also an object that doesn’t show the true “thing”. And it’s even harder to comprehend your nothingness and smallness when you are constantly blowing up your image and scrutinizing it.
Combine these social media issues we are also confronted with, with the actor’s tool of the image and you can understand how confusing and frustrating it can be to someone who has not created some clear boundaries of identity. That is why Mike’s character admits to being truthful only on stage and lying in real life and also why Riggan aspires to being “real” on stage by shooting himself.
And now — the ending. I have to admit, I’m a sucker for the artist-dying-for-his-art cliché and I would have been happy if the film ended after the shooting and wild applause. But it wouldn’t have been in the vein of the film’s mad fantasy to end so super-realistically and therefore an absurd ending was added, in which, miraculously, Riggan only shot his nose and is extremely appreciated for his performance. I’ve read interpretations that he is hallucinating before dying completely and that that is his funeral scene reimagined. His daughter seeing him fly away is a sign that she accepted his leaving (or ascension to heaven). My argument to support this would be the following. Of course, the whole movie is a satire about Hollywood and artistic ego, and his producer’s reactions to the good review would make sense in this universe. But still, how can he say the play will be reproduced forever with the same success, if the main character would have to realistically shoot himself every performance? The whole point of the “virtue of ignorance” was in the unique performance of that night, which could never be repeated and the theatre critic definitely knew that. It resembles a dying wish of how Riggan wanted to remain in everyone’s memory rather than reality. It’s director Iñárritu’s way of giving us “bad” news through the veil of fantasy, of closure and catharsis. Because, in effect, that is what Riggan experiences through his death — Birdman is put to silence sat on the toilet, while his daughter joins into his fantasy and watches him fly away to soulful freedom, released of the entrapping ego.
