by Christopher Barr
Peace of
mind is not the absence of conflict from life, but the ability to cope with it.

–
Friedrich Nietzsche
“I got a chance to do something
right. I gotta take it.”
– Riggan
Thomson
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) is a
masterpiece of modern American cinema. It’s a wonderfully executed black
comedy about a washed up actor on a quest to reinvent his career, leaning
toward more serious roles. Riggan Thomson, played flawlessly by actor
Michael Keaton, was once famous for acting in a Hollywood blockbuster comic
book superhero movie called “Birdman”, and its two sequels. Riggan left
the franchise 20 years ago, refusing to do a fourth Birdman movie and has been
residing in actor limbo ever since. He’s pretty well broke, separated
from his wife and has a rebellious daughter who just got out of rehab. At
its core, the film is about family, an exploration into artistry, a commentary
on celebrity, the eclipsing ubiquity of current superhero cinematic universe(s), a comment on the vacuous nature of the Hollywood blockbuster and learning to cope with feeling irrelevant in a stardom obsessed society.
The film is about getting past one’s ego, that personal bodyguard hardwired
into the minds of people, protecting their little sensitivities from the harsh
landscape of the external world.

– Jorge
Luis Borges
The film follows Riggan frantically
darting around the stage, labyrinth hallways and corridors of the St. James
theatre on Broadway, stopping off in various wardrobe and dressing rooms,
arguing with egos, alter-egos and super-egos. This hyper-real journey
within the world of Riggan Thompson is magically composed through one
continuous long tracking shot, which in all likelihood is an externalization of
his own stream of consciousness. The narrative plays out like an
uninterrupted river flowing through the passageways of the mind, displaying a
subjective life while an offbeat infectious jazzy percussion soundtrack echoes
through the dimly lit narrow halls.

“Popularity is the slutty little cousin
of prestige, my friend.”
– Mike Shiner

“You have a choice: either as little
displeasure as possible, painlessness in brief … or as much displeasure as
possible as the price for growth of an abundance of subtle pleasures and joys
that have rarely been relished yet? If you decide for the former and desire
to diminish and lower the level of human pain, you also have to diminish and
lower the level of their capacity for joy.”
–
Friedrich Nietzsche
During the public rehearsal of What
We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Mike Shiner, whose obsessed with his
method acting approach to the material, ends up taking a fit, disrupting the
rehearsal and causing Riggan to spiral into a feeling of self-doubt and fear
about what he’s attempting to accomplish. He begins second guessing
himself, his own talent, his relationships with his cast, crew and daughter,
causing him to ask the most pressing question on his mind; will they, the
audience, love him again? His daughter
Sam has the following to say to him on the matter of his worth:
“That means something to who? You
had a career, dad, before the third comic book movie, before people started to
forget who was inside that bird costume. You are doing a play based on a
book that was written 60 years ago for a thousand rich old white people whose
only real concern is going to be where they have their cake and coffee when
it’s over. Nobody gives a shit but you! And let’s face it, dad, you
are not doing this for the sake of art. You are doing this because you
want to feel relevant again. Well guess what? There is an entire
world out there where people fight to be relevant every single day and you act
like it doesn’t exist. This is happening in a place that you ignore, a
place that, by the way, has already forgotten about you. I mean, who the
fuck are you? You hate bloggers. You mock Twitter. You don’t
even have a Facebook page. You’re the one who doesn’t exist. You’re
doing this because you’re scared to death, like the rest of us, that you don’t
matter and, you know what, you’re right. You don’t! It’s not
important, okay? You’re not important! Get used to it.”


- Roland
Barthes

Birdman is a story about redemption and
recognition; it’s about the difference between power, popularity, and
prestige. We must learn to transform our mind if we want inner
peace, “The show must go on” is where the narrative of the film leaves
off, indicating philosopher Kierkegaard’s ‘Leap of Faith’, less in the
religious sense, focusing more on the spiritual journey one must take in order
to avoid falling into an existential crisis. Like
the symbolic flower in a vase, it’s about recognizing the pervasive
assignment of meaning that hinges on every word and label written or spoken,
and how those meanings are more often than not, relative to the individual
speaking them and not to actual reality. It’s about recognizing that
what’s confusing about life is simply a series of language games.
“To-morrow, and
to-morrow, and to-morrow.
Creeps in this petty pace
from day to day,
To the last syllable of
recorded time;
And all our yesterdays
have lighted fools
The way to dusty
death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking
shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his
hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no
more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of
sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
-
William Shakespeare, Macbeth
Riggan’s choice is to either get
swallowed by the existential bleakness that consumed Macbeth or become more
than what he thinks people assume he is. Inner peace is about accepting
what is, it’s about accepting your ego’s voice and rejecting it, which in the
end, Riggan had to do in order to be free to live his life without
self-loathing. Riggan ended up understanding that the only person he
could change was himself, and realizing this allowed him in the ending moments
of the film to do it. Riggan moved away from trying to control everything
and everyone in his world because the outer world never changes, peace comes
from making changes inside oneself. The inner peace that Riggan finally
achieved allowed him to be loved and to feel a sense of serenity that, in the
beginning he clearly sought as he levitated beside the head of the Buddha on
his window sill. This “The Unbearable Likeness of Being” suggests that
Riggan is to live his life as it is and not how others perceive it to be.
The paramours of courtesans
Are well and satisfied, content.
But as for me my limbs are rent
Because I clasped the clouds as mine.
I owe it to the peerless stars
Which flame in the remotest sky
That I see only with spent eyes
Remembered suns I knew before.
In vain I had at heart to find
The center and the end of space.
Beneath some burning, unknown gaze
I feel my very wings unpinned.
And, burned because I beauty loved,
I shall not know the highest bliss,
And give my name to the abyss
Which waits to claim me as its own.”
- Charles
Baudelaire
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ReplyDeleteVery insightful review, because rarely do we find such intelligence and integral appreciation of multipal perspectives: Riggin as narcissist, as father, as actor, as an ignorant, suffering human being like the rest of us.
ReplyDelete"And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on earth." (Raymond Carver quote}
A great analysis of a wonderful movie. Thanks for clarifying some of the symbolism and peppering the piece with bits of philosophy from times and places far and near.
ReplyDelete