Birdman (Keaton)

Movies
41

Incidentally, people say the taxi scene is evidence he doesn’t have powers. But really, it’s just NOT evidence that he does: just because he didn’t fly home, doesn’t mean he couldn’t have. More generally though, there’s a reason I presented that in such an adversarial manner.

Yes, from the literal text of the movie, it’s obviously intended to be ambiguous.

But from a film-making perspective, I don’t understand why you would make construct the movie in a manner where he doesn’t have super-powers, but the movie will lie to you and say he does. For instance, I don’t think he really summoned a giant bird-robot monster to destroy New York, because I understand the purpose of that scene in context. I can’t construct a message from this movie that I’m satisfied with if it’s all just in his imagination.

I can construct a read of the film where the fact that he has these powers, but keeps them secret, and that the act of keeping them a secret means something (if you’re trying to be an actor, it doesn’t matter if you can move things with your mind or fly. They don’t help you act or write any better.)

At the end of the day, I think unreliable narration is incredibly tricky and must be handled very, very carefully. If you’re going to unreliable-narrate to me, you need to utterly convince me that you know exactly what you’re doing. I have to believe that the author / director has constructed the work with sufficient care that when I try to unravel truth from falsehood, I’m confident that it isn’t a waste of my time. Otherwise, I can’t know where to stop and I will unravel it all the way down until I wonder why he even bothered trying to tell me the story in the first place.

All told, this movie is too sloppy for me to have that confidence, and so I am forced to take it literally.

42

I don’t really agree with much of what you just said as it relates to Birdman, but I’m glad you said it.

43

For the record, my read of the various super powers usages (from memory from a single viewing, could be missing something).

MAGIC!

  • Levitation during the opening scene - Magic! This scene throws the idea that his magic is tied to his increasingly unhinged mind out the window, as he’s as calm and collected as he’ll ever be at this point, but his powers also seem fully formed.
  • Light falling on co-star - Keaton probably did that, although not consciously.
  • Spinning lighter on table - Magic.
  • Flying onto the top of the building - Probably Magic. He’s in a fugue state at this point, so he may not have complete conscious control of his actions.
  • Flying home - Took a Taxi. In this case, as with the giant robo-bird-man, the “flight” is imagination. It’s a yearning for freedom, which he doesn’t allow himself to experience.
  • Trashing dressing room - Magic! And also not magic, once Zach shows up.
  • End - Magic. Totally flies away. Happy ending. Barf. I may have noted previously that the read here retroactively affects my read of the rest of the movie, and that the reading here depends almost entirely on 3 seconds of Emma Stone’s facial expression: is it disbelief, or sardonic disbelief? That’s a lot to put on one actress.
44

Great posts, Wheeljack!

It’s been long enough that I don’t think I can come up with anything new about the movie unless I see it again, but I remember feeling pretty strongly that the last scene, much like Take Shelter, must be interpreted in context with the rest of the movie.

I also remember being disappointed with how ambiguous the movie is, or at least feeling too stupid to figure it out (but my money’s on the director trying to be too clever).

45

What, nobody thinks the telekinesis and flying is just a metaphor?

46

Wouldn’t it be a bit boring if it was just metaphor (or if he’s just nuts)? It’s much more of an interesting movie if his powers are real.

47

Uh, not really.

48

Why is it more interesting if his powers are real?

Anyway, they don’t want to tell us either way. It’s just aggravating movie-making that confuses ambiguity with depth.

49

I saw this tonight. I really wanted to like it but did not. I thought the first 30 minutes or so were very interesting as the main characters were introduced but then it went to shit from there. It was about a 1:45 movie that felt twice as long to me.

50

It’s like, magic realism, maaan. Straightforward contrast of non-normal elements with normal (as opposed to fantasy or s-f per se, which actually change the world). Meant to be unsettling of conventional modernist, and indeed capitalist norms (such as “it’s metaphor”, or “he was mad”).

(But really it’s just a posh excuse to write fantasy :) )

51

I’m not exactly the guy to go to when you want deep analysis of movie plotting, but this one seemed so egregious that I think I might have a point.

This movie is Oscarbait.

Inside every film critic is a failed actor, or a failed director, much like how every radio DJ is a failed musician. They are fans of the art, and like any fanboy they will irrationally feel powerful kinship when they see a film that is about the thing they love. Birdman is, on the surface, a film about a man trapped in his own ego, and there is a slight argument about whether the film is embodying that ego metaphorically or whether we are seeing into his failing mind, where he also sees these things. But make no mistake, this is a film that has been calculated with fine precision to do not much more than take Oscars.

First, we have the relentless tracking shot. The most obvious and yet the most powerful move. A good tracking shot isn’t noticeable as a tracking shot except upon reflection. The easy choice is Goodfellas, where the non-film-school viewer enjoys the story of a gangster moving through his world with aplomb and with access to things outside the norm. Great tracking (should I be saying one-shot or something else?) shot that you only realize was a cinema nerd achievement until afterwards. Birdman abuses it, then obviously breaks it, but then abuses it again like we didn’t notice. Not cool.

Second, we have the chip shot, the easy layup, the lazy man’s way to the critic’s heart: The movie centers around the Theatre, capitals and Eurospelling intentional. Want to get an Oscar nod? Make a musical. Failing that, make something that refers constantly to the theater or screenwriting, and the critical reception will be on par with Jesus rolling into Hudson Bay on the raised Titanic with the unsinkable Molly Brown fellating an Aztec on the bowsprit. That’s positive, if you didn’t catch any of those tortured references.

Finally, we confuse the whole issue with super powers, which are damned near inarguably a figment of Keaton’s imagination, because otherwise it’s just stupid. You don’t make The Lord of the Rings and then chuck in a Feynman diagram in Saruman’s office. There’s a plot, and it moves forward. In Birdman, the existence of super powers is just a confusion of the modern age where every three out of four movies is a superhero movie. Birdman beyond the Oscar pandering is heavily informed by Michael Keaton, who launched the modern superhero movie, and it displays 98/2% likelihood (I asked NASA) the general story of an actor who is haunted by an old and missed opportunity, rather than some subtle telekensis action fest with a side dose of ambiguity.

tl;dr: I liked it, but I hate the interpretation.

52

If Keaton’s character does have telekinesis, can fly, etc., then he ought to consider saving the world, stopping evil-doers, and making the world a better place. Instead he is mortgaging his home to get his name out there in an unfamiliar field. At best his efforts may make groups of a few hundred people feel distracted from the bad things in their lives for a short time. This is making the world a better place in a more abstract way than landing a right cross on the jaw of (let’s say) Captain Nazi. But that’s assuming his powers are real. My wife and I thought they weren’t. I thought the epilogue in the hospital room was a reference to the epilogue in the hospital room and taxicab at the end of Taxi Driver: a dreamy wish fulfillment scene for the probably-dead protagonist that probably didn’t reflect what was “real” after the actions he took in the climax of the movie.

Speaking of superheroes in a movie filled with complex but mostly selfish characters: the most heroic, most selfless, best do-gooder in the movie was the guy who pulled Riggan back from the edge on top of that building. I think that was “Good Neighbor” played by Stephen Adly Guirgis.

53

After the gunshot, the long tracking shot(s) end, we experience a number of brightly lit, quickly cut scenes, where he wraps up all his loose ends and regrets. He makes up with his, ex, his daughter, moves past his Birdman legacy, and floats away. His powers, and everything after that final scene on stage, are fantasy.

54

So he death-imagines his daughter walking up to the window and chuckling after he’s gone? That’s weird.

It’s kind of neither here nor there, but I have it on pretty good authority that it’s harder than you’d think to commit suicide with a small caliber gun to the skull (from several inches away, with unsteady aim) . Your skull is pretty strong, it’s why if you’re serious about killing yourself, you put it in your mouth: that way it bounces around inside your skull.

The above kind of objections are why I don’t trust the film enough to really give it close readings.

Aside from that, I do generally agree with Houngan: it’s too impressed with itself and acting and the theater. People who relate to that are welcome to get more out of the film than I did, but it doesn’t really resonate with me.

55

He’s imagining her seeing him fly away.

56

Wise.

57

Better or worse than Mr. Mom?

58

The ending was ambiguous, and I believe intentionally so. Whether that’s good or bad can be debated. But I don’t buy any arguments that he had powers. Especially not Wheeljack’s dismissal of the flying/taxi scene as merely non-evidence that he does have powers (sorry to single you out, I really do appreciate your thoughts, you just have the clearest example of a totally different interpretation from mine).

In my head, this is being filed away one of those rare weird movie things where it’s so clearly meant to convey one thing that there should be no question whatsoever, and Qt3 so adamantly believes the opposite. I’ve been wrong about those before (Take Shelter, maybe Enter the Void), so I’m not presenting my own stubbornness as evidence in any debate, just saying this is gonna be memorable, like the time a bunch of you were convinced The Operative was a time-traveling Shepherd Book.

59

The idea that Keaton’s character actually had superhero powers like flight is kind of nuts to me. I thought the movie was using fantastic imagery to get its point across.

60

While I’m clearly on the obviously-no-powers page. I do have some empathy for gurugeorge’s magical realism interpretation. A lot of prominent Latin authors have incorporated magical realism into their work. Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jorge Luis Borges among the most prominent. It would not surprise me to see Inarritu as being heavily influenced by either of those writers.