Read all the pre-release build up and the buzz it has gotten based on performances, the fact that it was done to appear to be one continuous shot, etc. Just not a movie I can make time to see easily - it will happen.
*Birdman *is not a film to have a quick and easy reaction to. The acting was mostly magnificent and the script had moments of brilliance. The male parts were miles better than the female roles, which were criminally underwritten. We knew Michael Keaton and Edward Norton were good, but Zach Galifianakis? The long takes were more of a distraction than a virtue - after a while you started to pay attention to the camerawork - but at the same time made the events in the film seem to be continuous, which is the way we see most things in memory.
About a decade ago, there was a Canadian series called Slings and Arrows, which did three six-episode seasons, each focusing on putting on a different Shakespeare drama at a fake Stratford Festival. It’s virtually unknown, but would be in my top x for best television series ever. Each season - with moments of high comedy and high tragedy - looked at the lives of the actors, and why they wanted to act - why they needed to act. Each of the seasons had a story arc that mirrored the story arc in the play. Each of the seasons had the run of the play threatened. Any of this sounding like Birdman?
I’m sure there are other examples - actors love to play actors as horrible disturbed idiot savants who come to life only on stage - but the parallels are amazing. I’d put *Birdman *up there in Slings and Arrows territory, which is high praise, even though the tone and feel of the two are wildly different. No question that this is a film for adults. It’s thought-provoking and not a “feel good” movie, unless your idea of feel good is a night at the theater watching a Tom Stoppard play, as is mine.
If you’re an adult, therefore, you should see Birdman. Like twickster I’m embarrassed that I haven’t seen Iñárritu’s other films. This one had so much, pardon me, twickery, that I’m not sure how to rate his direction. I’d be surprised if fewer than two of the men got Oscar nominations, though.
And if you’re an adult, find Slings and Arrows and watch from beginning to end. The whole three seasons is a story arc in itself so watch them in order.
An actor became a big star 30 years ago playing a superhero (Birdman). After refusing to make a fourth film in the series, he pretty much stopped working. Now he’s written an adaptation of a Raymond Carver story – the production he is directing and starring in is about to open on Broadway. The follows him during the last few days before the play opens.
I saw a commercial for it on television that left me equally uncertain about the movie’s premise - and that was after I had seen the movie. The marketing has been terrible.
The problem is that it’s not a summarize-in-a-sound bite movie, and I’m not sure I can put it in terms that would make me want to go see it. All the other trailers we saw with it were character studies of people who go through horrific physical struggles. Birdman’s horrible struggle is interior - that’s why it’s more like a short story or play than a standard movie. The actors battles are with themselves. The themes are literary themes: what am I as a person, a parent, a spouse, a worker; what is my place in society; what is my legacy; who am I? Those are all themes of great literature, which is why great literature often translates more poorly to the screen than entertainments.
You go to see Birdman like you read a good book - for the way it talks about these universals, not for the universals themselves.
I saw it and enjoyed it, but I have to go back and see it again. I thought the acting was superb, but I didn’t fully appreciate the “continuous-shot” aspect of the cinematography. And I’m still not sure about the “reality” of Keaton’s “powers”.
I thought it was good-not-great - the “continuous shot” gimmick really felt like a gimmick after a while, and became intrusive. I did also like that I didn’t know where it was going, and Michael Keaton was great (as was a lot of the dialogue), but overall I thought it was more interesting than excellent. I think people should see it, but there have been better films this year - “Boyhood”, of course, and even “Whiplash”, which I saw the day after “Birdman” and, while more conventional, brought a lot of intensity to that convention and had a performance to rival Keaton’s from J.K. Simmons.
I was really worried the movie was going for the overly-telegraphed, cliche-y “public suicide” ending for a while there…and I laughed when I realized that the movie itself literally dodged a bullet.
I’m not sure why, but filming long continuous scenes seems to be the du rigeur methodology for directors to wave their artsy wang in the air, over the last decade. :rolleyes:
The reviewer for The New Yorker seemed to spend more time talking about that than about the movie. He had the only negative review on the front page of rottentomatoes, so you can judge him on that.
I avoided this thread to avoid any possible spoilers before I saw the film Watched it yesterday and immediately wanted to hand out awards for acting and directing and film/camera work.
Have to admit though, the first scene had me wondering what I’d gotten myself into for the next two hours. In retrospect, that made the movie experience even better for me.
I enjoyed it immensely. I thought it was hysterical, I giggled throughout.
The long tracking just highlighted the acting accomplishments for me, in many cases the actors were carrying on long scenes with many beats in real time - with cameras stuck up their noses. (Yes, I know some of the long shots were cheated…)
As for the marketing of the film, well…it’s really not geared toward the average joe movie-goer. If you have an affinity for New York theatre literary works then you would get enough clues from the advertisements.
I expect award nominations aplenty - Keaton for sure, maybe even Emma Stone, Naomi Watts really delivered (as always) but I don’t see nominations for her or Norton. Zach was good in a straight role, but nothing revelatory.
The illusion of the continuous shot is relevant, IMO, because its supposed to put us in the mind and mood of the protagonist. I saw this technique as another way of having us see the world from Thomas’ POV. It also helps to create the almost seamless blending between fictional performance and reality, which is what I inferred as the movie’s central theme.
I enjoyed it, but I’m still mulling over the significance of the last scene.
I think when he said, “Bye-bye and Fuck you”, he meant it. The fact that it ended with a happy scene was just the director cleverly giving us something unexpected.
My take is that he’s absolutely delusional and powerless.
I think the shot of his Emma Stone’s reaction as she looks out the window is how he’d imagine her reaction to realizing “he is superhuman!” as he himself believed himself to be in those final moments before he hits the ground.
The title says OPEN SPOILERS, so I’m not spoiler tagging my answer to this.Don’t read it if you haven’t seen the movie!
I don’t think there’s any ambiguity in the final scene. Or rather, there is, but not the obvious one. I mean, this isn’t Pan’s Labyrinth. He didn’t have powers. (Though I LOVED the scene where Mike (Ed Norton) pretends that he has the ability to clairvoyantly know the lines of the script without having read it, and the audience and Riggan have the exact same reaction of almost buying it for half a second because—hey! someone else with powers! There was another scene I can’t think of, maybe in the play, where someone sort of alludes metaphorically to having some kind of power. The metareferences and foreshadowing and callbacks were really jazz-like.)
The only question is not whether he flew away or fell to the ground, but whether he left his hospital bed at all. He obviously must not have jumped earlier when the guy on the roof started to talk him down, but that was when we saw him flying. That whole scene was the character’s fantasy, not just a deluded version of what happened. Likewise, I think everything from the moment he left his hospital bed was fantasy. (A friend pointed out that his nose wouldn’t really have looked that good!) He fantasized about suicide (and about apparent suicide as the birth of his true self) but never had the—and I hesitate to use these words to describe it—courage or conviction to carry it out successfully.
At least, I think that interpretation is more consistent with the character up to that point and with the themes of the movie. But I’m not certain.