It’s been a while, but I really want to talk about Birdman, a movie I watched a few days ago with a friend I used to know in middle school and reconnected with in college.
What’s Birdman about? Kind of hard to say, as it often is for me. The precise details of a plot are not usually in sharp focus in my mind, while the other aspects of a story remain subjective and inexpressible as clear cut fact. The cast consists of actors – in real life, and in the contrived reality of the film.(Birdman is very meta). The protagonist is a washed up actor recognized purely for the role of a superhero he had starred as for the majority of his acting career: Birdman. On a surface level of analysis, his existence as the icon of “Birdman” represents the prostitution of his talents to consumerism, to making movies that generate a lot of revenue, but not a lot of respect for the medium. On the same level, his self-written and directed theatrical adaptation of Raymond Carver’s When We Talk About Love, which is the object of the film, represents his last ditch attempt to rise past that image of himself.
There is, however, so much more to this film. First, if nothing else strikes you about this film, the performances will. Michael Keaton as Riggan Thomson – the mentioned protagonist (I thought it was Reagan until I looked online), Edward Norton as Mike Shiner, Riggan’s deviant co-actor, and Emma Stone as Riggan’s troubled daughter Sam were amazingly good. They fit in perfectly with the offbeat, quirky script and managed to also transmit all of the concealed (in some parts, obvious) emotional significance behind every deed or quote. There were so many parts, especially toward the end, where I felt myself wanting to tear up, except at the same time I was confused, because the film doesn’t blast its emotional moments at you the way a tear-jerker would, but sort of implies them, or leaves them unsaid and unformed onscreen. It’s an emotional movie, but definitely not a maudlin one, which is one of the reasons I feel it is so good.
Purely from a cinematographic standpoint, I’m sure pages could be written by someone actually familiar with the way these things go, but I’m not one of them. I will say that the way the movie was filmed creates a lot of tension; the way the camera tails a character through a corridor, obstructing vision; the great use of the presence of danger where it is especially effective. The movie gets hard to watch at moments, but this is also nothing but a sign of how well it is made.
Thematically, Birdman is gripping and rich. I don’t want to really explicitly say anything about its themes, because I think they will be at least a little different for anyone, but for me they are a compelling mixture of redemption, sacrifice, futility, and hope. The actors – especially Riggan – for their play, have given so much of themselves, an amount extremely painful to give for the sake of anything, and the underlying question is whether it was all worth it. Their anxiety is very relatable but at the same time it’s a poignant contrast to the resolve they come to show.
And on top of it all, Birdman is a comedy. It’s hilarious and fits the label of a black comedy splendidly. It’s dramatic (haha) but sidesplitting at the same time. I find it amazing although not unexpected that a movie whose genre is defined by humor is able to access the reaches of human character and display them more powerfully and memorably than dramas with that explicit goal.
Verdict? WATCH IT!!!!!! AND TELL ME ABOUT IT AFTER. BIRDMAN IS REAAALLLLYYYY GOOD.
I give it an “Outstanding” out of 10.
mostly in store 