Alejandro González Iñárritu’s film Birdman recently won the Oscar for Best Picture. The movie actually deals with a lot of the topics that we have been discussing in class, as the subtitle “The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance” would suggest. This blogpost will have spoilers about the movie.
In the movie, Michael Keaton plays washed-up movie star Riggan Thomson, known for his role as Birdman in a series of superhero movies. As the movie goes on, it becomes clear that one of Riggan’s biggest problems is trying to separate himself from his role portrayed in his movies. People see him, the actor, and shout “Birdman!”. The lines between movie and real-life become even more blurred when you consider that Michael Keaton’s life parallels Riggan’s. Keaton too starred in a series of superhero movies in the past, dropped out of the limelight, and is now trying to be viewed as a serious actor through a new project. For Riggan, this redemption is found through a play adaptation of Raymond Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”. For Keaton, redemption is found in the movie itself, Birdman. These similarities make for a problem quite similar to the one I found myself having in The Things They Carried, trying to distinguish author-O’Brien from character-O’Brien. How much of Riggan is invented, and how much of it is actually Keaton? Just incase Keaton’s similarities to Riggan weren’t enough to bring up this type of discussion, Edward Norton also shares quite a few traits with his character within the movie, Mike Shiner.
One other similarity between Birdman and the works we’ve experienced so far is the inability to tell what is real and what is fiction. Throughout the movie Riggan sees and hears his character Birdman talking to him. Riggan seems to have powers of flight and telekinesis when he’s alone. There are several moments where it is suggested that these “powers” are just a figment of his mind, and that the actual results can be explained away by normal actions. However, the final scene subverts these moments. In the final scene Riggan lies in a hospital bed, in recovery after a failed suicide attempt. While his daughter leaves to get some water for his flowers, Riggan climbs out of the window and appears to take off in flight. This image is supported by the fact that when Riggan’s daughter returns and looks out the open window, she is not alarmed, but rather overjoyed. This would suggest that Riggan did have these powers throughout the whole movie, and now the viewer is unsure of what to believe.
I however, think this ending has a different meaning that can be explained by use of the subtitle, “The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance”. It appears to me that the final ending never actually occurs. The hospital scene is actually a sort of afterlife imaging on the behalf of Riggan, perhaps comparable to that of Peyton Farquhar in An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. In this afterlife, Riggan finally receives acceptance and love from the public, his daughter, his wife, and his manager. The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance, then, would be to believe that all of this actually occurred, and that Riggan finally reaches a point of happiness. This relies on ignorance of the reality, however, that Riggan is actually dead, having committed suicide at the end of his play. I am not sure if this is the correct interpretation of the movie, and I wish we could discuss it in class. It had so many similarities to the novels that we have been reading so far!
I watched the trailer for Birdman six months ago. And even though it left off the fact that the whole film was going with the one-tracking-shot tactic, of which I see a lot these days (a notable example is True Detective), seeing Edward Norton getting beat up by a delusional man made the Tyler Durden in me giggle a little. From then until when I actually got to see the film itself, I would often times think of possible ways the film can be self-referential - besides the obvious fact that it's going to be a meta-satire on Keaton's life as well as the contemporary condition of North American pop art. It didn't really go anywhere, then the one-tracking-shot hit me like a ton of brick - Everything we see in the film was part of this grand stream of consciousness.
ReplyDeleteYou've seen the film so you know there were actually two major tracking shots that constituted the film, with the second one being after Riggan shooting himself (particularly right after the slow-motion montage). The montage itself can be of major significance as well, as if it's disrupting the stream of consciousness that is Riggan's which we've been following from the beginning, leading me to believe that the second one could possibly be the stream of consciousness of the daughter played by Emma Stone. This can tie in nicely with your argument about the film's similarity with Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge. But there are so many things I wreck my brain over. Like how at the end the alter-ego Birdman seemed almost too apologetic and defeated, which stood in sharp contrast with the behavioral pattern he demonstrated throughout the film. That complicates the implication of a happy ending, even if it's all a dream, because wouldn't the alter-ego be happy now that Riggan has "gotten out of that dump"? And like why would the slow-motion montage would begin with the marching band, which was definitely reminiscent of a previous scene we had seen earlier in the film.
Anyway, in short, there's this part of me that thinks maybe an interpretation of Birdman along the line of OAOCB is definite and conclusive, and then there's this part that still wants me to waste more money buying the Blu-ray and give up my weekends because it's still not satisfied.
Sorry for the typos. Typed too fast cause I was too excited.
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