“And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?”
“I did.”
“And what did you want?”
“To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on this earth.”
Raymond Carver, Late Fragment
Birdman is both wonderfully brilliant and maddeningly frustrating. Like a magic trick, you want to understand how they did it, but there’s a certain distance between you and the thing itself that you will probably never bridge. I am not sure whether that arises from the brilliant way it presents the illusion of a film taking place in a single shot, or the absolutely claustrophobic cinematography, or that driving free-form jazz drum beat interspersed with segments from Mahler’s No. 9 symphony, but it seems that Birdman nails almost every one of its aesthetic conceits. Where it fails, really, comes down to the presentation of its emotional connections.
Birdman’s story works on a few different layers of reality, which definitely makes understanding Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s very strange film a puzzle. The story follows Riggan Thomson, Michael Keaton playing himself a faded Hollywood actor famous for his role as superhero Birdman. Riggan does not feel wanted or loved for his work as Birdman, and as such he mounts a Broadway adaptation of a short story by Raymond Carver. This is the way all Hollywood actors seek to demonstrate that they mean something, that their work has eternal value in some vast ocean of human history. Thomson doesn’t want to be remembered for being a guy in a dumb bird suit peddling CGI pornography for the kids; he wants to do something. But WHY does he want to do it?
That remains the central question of the film, and when it comes down to being honest with himself, all of Thomson’s actions come down to the need for love, to be loved, not in the shallow way but in a true, real way. Everything in Thomson’s life, and what we see on screens, end up becoming shallow by the very nature of its artifice. The people of the theater have reputations to uphold; everyone wears masks to everyone else, and who knows when they’re being honest? Edward Norton’s character is probably the most representative of this; he’s been a Method actor so long, the lines between reality and fiction blur to where you can’t even tell his true nature.
The three levels of reality, mostly created by magical realism, lend an uneasy quality to the whole proceedings, as if to highlight the artifice. On one level, we have standard reality with all of its standard mechanations. On another, we clearly see Riggan using super powers, and yet this is only a result of his own perception. Does he see the world in a different way from the rest of us? Does his perception give us something? Maybe. On yet another level, the actors in the adaptation of Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” also demonstrate yet another level where, in the shelter of being different people, they can talk about what “real” love is. Sound confusing? You’re not alone.
Birdman sits in that strange place of placing multiple meta-narratives on top of its primary narrative, which can confuse us even more. Michael Keaton was once Batman, and Riggan was once Birdman – there could be no greater bit of perfect casting than this. Unfortunately, I think that’s where Birdman’s emotional resonance will simply disappear for the vast majority of people; when you can’t tell what is meant to refer to a real world thing, or whether I am supposed to know something about the real Naomi Watts to understand this scene, that’s a problem. Those depths seem somewhat necessary to the whole, given that Birdman clearly wants to show the pains of artistic expression AND critique Hollywood’s facile ways of creating their art in so many cases. And yet, all that background knowledge ultimately hurts a film that wants to actually tell you something.
And that something, actually, is pretty powerful. Keaton goes for broke here, giving you both the dramatic beats and the comic timing necessary to make a lot of this work (including the Birdman persona, which is absolutely hilarious on so many levels). So many people talk about love, but none of them can grasp it, and that is because their lives are dedicated to so many things that aren’t it. They find it in the wrong places, they desire to exist and be known through their work, but they cannot find fulfillment through the banal meaning of modern society. None of it really matters, in the end, when you confuse love for admiration – I suppose that is the perennial problem of the stage actor. The lines are blurred, and things cease to be real, when you cannot look at reality through the eyes of innocence. The world of Birdman’s characters lack sincerity, either seeking to appeal to vanity or admiration, but always missing what truly matters/
I guess why they throw that Raymond Carver quote up there, right? Honestly, this is the kind of film to watching several times, since I can’t imagine anyone getting what this is really about (especially that super ambiguous ending with a host of different interpretations) on a first go. That’s why I say it fails on a purely emotional level: it embraces the same love of technicality and artificial presentation it condemns, and embraces those contradictions in its very presentation. Meta-commentary always fails to reach the heart, and that’s no less true here. It is simply too densely referential, dependent on things outside of the filmic context, to succeed.
This, in no ways, means that Birdman is bad, or awful. In fact, watching it and its energetic pacing is exhilarating and exhausting all at the same time. I just can’t say it will appeal to everyone (especially given the content as well – prepare for much language and other such things!). Still, I think if you are up for something intellectually difficult and challenging like this, I would heartily recommend it.
