The film opens with a shot of Michael Keaton sitting
cross legged in a pair of white underpants, hovering about a metre off the
floor. And thus begins an awkward relationship between filmmaker and audience,
as difficult as each relationship between the characters of the play. For the
film is a play, as the full title of the film (Birdman or The Unexpected Virtue
of Ignorance) requires us to note, and the theatre within the film represents
reality.
The opening moment of supernatural magic sets the scene
for a film about a superhero. A quiet moment of solitude where our protagonist
reflects on his condition. It's a standard scene in the genre. Here is one
superhero who wonders how he got to this place. A place that smells of balls.
What is this place? The Earth or this brick walled room? Or a state of mind?
And are we talking about the balls barely concealed by his present attire? Or,
metaphorically, the condition of mediocrity?
But that opening moment of wonder that the filmmaker has
given us is fake. He isn't asking us, after all, to suspend our disbelief, as
is required in viewing action adventures. We don't, at first, have any way of
knowing this, since the play of the film is focalised on Thomas Riggan. Did the
stage light fall because of his superpowers? Why doubt it, they haven't been
called into question. Not yet.
It isn't until after Mike Shiner tells us
"popularity is the slutty little cousin of prestige" that the
filmmaker reveals that those powers are the illusion of a fragile mind. A
fading mind whose life work has been dedicated to creating popular
entertainment for the audiences which, in turn, prefer to escape reality
through fantasy than confront the painful truths of life. Admit it, Iñárritu
demands, you were childishly drawn in by the magical fiction. And now we are to
feel both wonderment and embarrassment at each delightful instance of fantasy.
Iñárritu isn't done mocking us yet. The relationship
between daughter, underplayed with poise by Emma Stone, and her father stems
from his failings, namely, as she tells us, he wasn't around and then tried to
make up for it by trying to make her feel special. A line delivered without
melodrama that confronts each member of the audience to reassess the true
extent of one's parents' shortcomings.
On the other hand, Iñárritu helps us a little,
signposting the role of the theatre within the film as the description of some
sort of reality. As an aside, who doesn't come away wanting to explore the
works of Raymond Carver? The description of a man trying and failing to take
his life is echoed in Riggan's story delivered to his ex-wife about his own
failed suicide attempt. A story that is both bathetic and ridiculous. Iñárritu
chooses black comedy over slapstick, having his protagonist tell the story,
rather than film it. Instead he shows a beautiful shot of the beach with the
seagulls pecking at the helpless corpses of the washed up jellyfish. This is a
modern film noir.
I wanted to see something positive in this story, an
allegory of how unbearable pain helped ironically to avoid total destruction
and led to a new beginning. But no. Riggan heads out to take his life again
failing spectacularly and ridiculously. And yet to the immediate onlookers, and
those connected through the fantastical nature of a world of social media, his
failure is misinterpreted as an act of heroism. In today's currency, heroism is
measured in the number of views on YouTube or followers on Twitter.
Affixed on Riggan's mirror is a small card which says:
"a thing is a thing, not what is said of that thing". Riggan lambasts
the Times critic for the lazy application of commonplace labels. Iñárritu urges
us to work harder, to think harder.
