It's three days until the opening of a Broadway production of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver, an adaptation written and directed by, as well as starring, Riggan Thomson. Riggan was once the star of the blockbuster Birdman film franchise in the 90's but now, he's an often mocked has-been who's desperately attempting to gain recognition as a serious actor. Things are not going well with the play at all: during a rehearsal, one of the actors gets injured and is replaced with Mike Shiner, a popular but very difficult actor who doesn't care who he offends or what he has to do to make his performance great; Riggan's estranged daughter Sam, who's a recovering drug addict, is working as his assistant and the two of them don't get along that well; one of the actors is Riggan's girlfriend, Laura, who doesn't feel at all loved or appreciated by him; and his amicable relationship with his ex-wife, Sylvia, is starting to crumble, as Riggan continues to only think of himself and his career rather than doing right by their daughter. On top of all of this pressure, Riggan, who frequently drinks and goes for long periods without sleep, continually has visions of himself having supernatural powers and struggles with the inner voice of his superhero alter-ego, Birdman, who mocks him for having given up his billion-dollar franchise and trying to be something he's not, insisting that he's better than all of these Broadway actors whom he aspires to emulate. As the play's opening night approaches and his depression and grip on reality worsen, Riggan may do something exceedingly drastic and foolhardy to gain the respect he so craves.
Riggan is also literally tormented by the voice and visions of the character he played in the movies, who mocks him for the state he's in and his rejection of movie stardom, trying to get him to make a comeback as Birdman, saying that it's who he is. Riggan attempts to use meditation and calm breathing to block the voice out but it clearly does no good and he starts having violent outbursts where he trashes everything around him while arguing with Birdman, often imagining that he has powers like telekinesis and the gift of flight while doing so. Combine all of this with his constant drinking, lack of sleep, and all-around bad headspace and he's quite a mess of a human being in the days leading up to opening night. That night, after he had to walk through Times Square in his underwear during the previous night's preview, had a demoralizing encounter with theater critic Tabitha Dickinson at the bar afterward, and dealt with Birdman emphatically telling him that he must make a comeback in the part, Riggan is totally depressed, even though the play is going quite well. While talking with Sylvia in his dressing room before the final scene, Riggan admits to her that he tried to commit suicide after she caught him cheating and that he now feels like a failure whose life has completely passed him by, adding that he doesn't even have Sam anymore. Desperate to make some kind of mark, he takes a loaded gun with him on stage rather than the prop one and, following his character's soliloquy about how he's nothing, shoots himself, which actually gets him a standing ovation. Riggan survives this, though he blows his nose off in the process, and is later told that the play was a success and people everywhere are praying for his recovery. Though he now kind of has what he wanted, Riggan is no less unhappy than he was before, and after he removes the bandages that cover his nose, he looks at his swollen, bruised face in the mirror before apparently deciding to end it all and jump out the window... or, at least, that's one of the many interpretations of the ending.
While we're on the subject, I'll say that I do rather like the Birdman character and his portrayal in the film, coming off as a mixture of Batman, Hulk Hogan (in how he often says "brother"), and Samuel L. Jackson with his constant use of "motherfucker" and the really memorable way in which he enunciates it. As much as he mentally torments Riggan, he has some nice lines, such as, "Shave off that pathetic goatee. Get some surgery. Sixty's the new thirty, motherfucker!", and, "See? There you go, you motherfucker. Gravity doesn't even apply to you," and I could actually see him being a really good life coach and personal trainer, someone who would really get you motivated with what he says and how he says it. Plus, while his outfit isn't the most original thing and is about what you would expect, I still like it enough to where I would love to see actual movies involving this character (yeah, I still hate the fact that Keaton only played Batman twice).
However, that doesn't stop him from stealing Riggan's story for an interview he has with the New York Times, which he defends as having been the first thing that popped into his head when Riggan confronts him about it. Riggan also accuses him of not being the honest, truthful, serious theater actor he portends to be, accusing him of lying about writing his own lines when all he did was change a few and uses the fact that he brings up how many views the video of him with a massive erection onstage got on YouTube as proof that he does care about popularity. Bringing up a quote Mike made about his father having been a drunk, Riggan shows him that he can be as "truthful" as he is by convincing him that his own father was a mean, abusive drunk who was also a sexual deviant towards him and his sister, only to then reveal that he made it all up. This leads into a real fight between the two of them, as Mike continues to mock Riggan, telling him he should use some of that talent he displayed when they're onstage. However, there are moments between Mike and Sam where he proves that there is more to him than his just being a conceited, difficult jerk. He admits that his habit of antagonizing people and not caring what they think probably isn't as "cool" as Sam describes it, later saying that he deserved Riggan socking him in the face, and that he's insecure about how the erection he had onstage with Lesley was the first one he'd had in six months, saying that acting is the one part of his life where he has no problems whatsoever. Plus, he says that he wishes he could view New York through her unclouded, more naive eyes; in other words, life and the way the acting world works has made him the person he is. He and Sam soon start hooking up, going as far as making out in the rafters above the stage while Riggan is down below, performing a scene. What eventually becomes of the two of them is left ambiguous, as Mike's story arc all but disappears during the movie's final act.
Sam becomes intrigued with Mike Shiner almost immediately after she meets him, which involved him commenting that she has a nice ass. The two of them have a couple of heart-to-hearts up on the theater's roof, playing rounds of truth or dare that allow them to get to know each other and allowing her to see what's really behind Mike's abrasive, difficult personality. She also confides in him that she's angry at her father both for his years of neglect and how he's tried to make up for it by going on about how special she is. Mike gives her this speech about how she really is special and, while Sam calls it on how corny it was, she still dares him to join her in the rafters above the stage, where the two of them start to make out passionately, all while Riggan is doing a scene down below. Later that night, after he's seen them making out, Riggan and Sam have a more amicable interaction in his dressing room, where she realizes how much the problems the play is encountering are getting to him. She also shows him something she was taught in rehab that signifies how little human arrogance and self-importance means in the long run, and a viral video of him walking through Times Square in his underwear, which happened not too long before, telling him that this is actually beneficial in making him relevant. To that end, when she visits him in the hospital after he shot his nose off onstage, Sam tells Riggan she's made a Twitter account for him and has posted a picture of his bandaged face there. The movie ends on her, as she goes to find a vase for some flowers that were sent to Riggan and comes back to find the room empty. Looking out the window, she looks down at the ground, then up in the air, and smiles and laughs in a manner that, as mentioned earlier, can be interpreted in many different ways.
Technically, Birdman is a true marvel to behold, not the least of which is due to how it's shot to look like almost the entire story is told in one long, continuous take, a technique that Alejandro Inarritu chose to employ because, "We live our lives with no editing," and to truly make Riggan's miserable reality come off as inescapable. There have been movies that have attempted this style before, most notably Alfred Hitchcock's Rope, but even as technically proficient as that film is, you can tell when there was a cut, as the camera would often zoom in on something until the screen was completely black and then pull away from it. Here, once the movie proper starts, it looks as though almost every minute of the nearly two-hour running time is done in one go, save for a series of cuts in a montage of images in the immediate aftermath of Riggan shooting himself. Moreover, the story takes place over several days and yet, the transitions from one day to another are so seamless, often going from backstage drama one night straight into the next night's performance, that you're not even likely to realize that it's now the following night. I know visual effects were used to make those transitions look smooth and flawless, as well as to help with the illusion that the whole thing was done in almost one take, but still, can you imagine how technically complicated and punishing this approach must have been for everyone involved? Not only must it have been nightmarish for the cinematographer and camera crew, who had to keep moving constantly and keep the lighting consistent and natural, but Inarritu and the cast also had to work out every single movement, line reading, and such to make sure it all flowed together naturally, with even the slightest mistake meaning they had to start over. They also had to do a good number of takes in order to get into a well-oiled rhythm, which had to have been very, very taxing for everyone involved, and that's just for scenes involving dialogue and the actors walking around in the theater and down the street. Try to imagine how hard it must have been to transition into that fight Riggan and Mike get into at one point and then follow Riggan back to his dressing room, which he proceeds to smash up, apparently using superpowers. Yet, amazingly, none of the actors seemed to have a problem with this; in fact, it seemed like they all enjoyed their time on the film. For this achievement alone, it's small wonder the film won Oscars for Best Director and Best Cinematography.
The one-shot approach was further complicated by the fact that, for a down-to-Earth drama, the movie features quite a number of visual effects that have to be integrated seamlessly into the flow, whereas normally, you cut from fully live-action elements to shots involving effects. Because of this, Rodeo FX, the company hired to work on the movie, was also involved in the editing. Most of the effects work in the movie involve Riggan imagining that he's using superpowers whenever he's by himself. Some of these are mundane, such as the first shot of him floating in midair in a lotus position, him making doors open by themselves, or slightly moving objects, and they were probably fairly simple to pull off, while others, like him trashing his dressing room using apparent telekinesis, was probably more difficult, though they had the added benefit of the camera panning over to Jake entering the room and then panning back to see Riggan breaking everything in a normal manner. But, where the movie really goes all out is the scene between Riggan and Birdman on the day of the play's opening, where Birdman tries to talk him into making another movie. The two of them walk down the street in single-file, when Birdman suddenly starts hovering in the air behind Riggan using his wings. Riggan then snaps his fingers and the camera snaps over to the street to reveal a big action sequence, with a SWAT team climbing over cars and firing weapons, aircraft crashing into buildings, a helicopter getting blown in half, and the shadow of some enormous creature falling on them. Birdman hovers into the shot, fires at an enormous, robotic vulture-like monster perched atop a building, and Riggan is then shown floating up into the air, onto the roof of the theater, and after a brief talk with someone who finds him up there, he jumps off and flies throughout the city in an extensive sequence, before finally landing at the front of the theater and heading in to prepare for opening night. That latter section took a lot of preparation to get absolutely right and the end result really does look amazing, both effects-wise and also, again, because of how seamless it's put into this one ongoing shot.
As impressive as really well-done, front and center effects are, what's just as, if not more cool, to me, though, is how effects artists manage to do stuff that's right in front of your face and yet, you never even think about it. For instance, since there are a number of scenes involving mirrors, they often had to remove the reflections of the crew, and the background outside the windows of the hospital at the end of the movie was added in later. What's really amazing is how they did the night-to-day transitions where the camera is looking up at the city skyline, using a simple matte technique and combining together various shots of the buildings taken at different times during the day. But the best one by far has to be the last time you see Birdman, when he's reflected in the mirror of the hospital bathroom when Riggan removes the bandages on his face but is not seen when the camera pans around to the actual room behind Riggan. Obviously, there was some editing and visual effects trickery there, but the way Birdman's wing suddenly appears out of the corner of the frame before you see his entire form, coupled with the ongoing flawless flow of the camera, makes it especially incredible to see.
Inarritu's goal of making Riggan's reality inescapable is further emphasized by how, save for the ending in the hospital, the entire film is set either at the theater or just down the street, among the upscale bars, back-alleys, seedy small liquor stores, and Times Square itself. It certainly explores what's going on in the characters' lives but all of that happens either within the walls of the theater or when they're having a drink right down from it, hitting home the notion that the play is totally dominating their very existence, especially Riggan's, who appears to actually live in his dressing room. I know from experience that this is quite true to life, as I was involved with a high school drama production of Guys and Dolls during my freshman year (I did a lot of backstage work and operated a spotlight during the performances) and, up until the following spring, it did come to take up a good chunk of my time, as I had to be there whenever there was a performance, sometimes at night when I had to go to school the next day or a couple of times during the day. There was even one day when I was there from 9:00 or 10:00 in the morning to 7:00 that night, and this was on a Sunday. And remember, this was just for a high school play. I can't begin to imagine what the real deal is like. In any case, there is something of a nice dichotomy with the interiors of the theater, as you have the big, nice-looking main stage and auditorium, which Inarritu never fails to show in all their glory, and the more confined, somewhat claustrophobic, backstage areas that, while not exactly horribly rundown, do look as though they've seen better days. The narrow hallways, small commissary and lounge areas, and the dressing rooms give off something of a prison kind of vibe, particularly for Riggan when this play that he's risked everything for starts shaping up to be an unmitigated disaster that he can't escape. The upper areas of the backstage section, like the rafters above the stage and the rooftop, come off like the only places where one can stretch their legs, so to speak, so it's not surprising that Mike and Sam often head up there during their downtime. As confining as it all is, it's often shot very well, with lots of deep colors typically saturating the immediate backstage area as well as the main stage and giving it a very surreal vibe.
While ostensibly a drama, Birdman is also darkly comedic in a number of ways, as it makes things that should be off-putting, like Ralph suddenly getting whacked in the head by a falling light during a table read, Mike standing around in the middle of the costume room completely naked while Sam stands and watches, and his attempting to basically rape Lesley onstage because it's the first time in months that he's managed to get it up, more laughable because of their inherent absurdity. Other examples include the true first shot of Riggan levitating in his dressing room in nothing but his underwear; the sequence where Riggan confronts Mike about stealing his quote by forcing him out of a tanning bed, chasing up to the lounge area, making up a story about his dad being horribly abusive just to prove a point to him, and then getting in a scuffle with him, all while Mike is wearing nothing but a speedo and is covered in spray-tan; Riggan basically having a total breakdown during his arguments with Birdman, destroying his dressing room in the process in one scene; and, when he's at his lowest point following his confrontation with Tabitha Dickinson, he comes across a random guy on the street who's spouting off a quote from Macbeth (a quote I had to learn word-for-word and then repeat verbatim to my English teacher, I might add). However, the most blatantly uncomfortable and yet funny scene is when, on the night of the final preview, Riggan is out back, having a smoke, when the door shuts and his robe gets snagged in it, forcing him to go around to the front and walk through Times Square in his underwear to get back inside, all while getting jeered at and videoed by the throngs of people there. And then, with the play's scene already underway, he has no time to enter from offstage and, instead, goes through the audience while saying his lines and has to mime having a gun until he reaches the stage and someone hands him the prop. It's not all laugh out-loud funny but it does manage to generate at least a smirk, which is a nice way for the film to offset some of the issues I have with it.
One of those issues is just how nonsensical and arty the movie sometimes gets. For the most part, I understand the narrative and the story, but then, you have all these random images, such as the first thing you actually see when the movie begins, which is this meteorite-like object streaking through the sky, and after Riggan shoots himself, you get this montage of more shots of that object, a marching band on the stage, accompanied by people dressed up as the Statue of Liberty and as superheroes like Spider-Man, Iron Man, and Bumblebee from Transformers, dead jellyfish lying on a beach, and a shot of his dressing room window with a beam of sunlight streaming through it. Some of the imagery I get the significance of, like the jellyfish, but others, I'm just sitting there, wondering, "What am I looking at?" Plus, as inventive and well-done as some of those transitions from one day to another are, the way some of them are done come off as intentionally unusual and brow-raising. For instance, when Laura tells Riggan that she thinks she's pregnant before slapping him because of how bad he is at pretending that he's happy about it, she randomly kisses him and the camera follows her as she heads up to the stage, glancing briefly to look at some random guy sitting in a doorway, apparently rewiring something, before she says to the camera, in a very breathy and husky manner, "First preview tomorrow. Here we go," as the scene then transitions to said preview, with the play already in progress. The transition from the first night's preview to the second is more overly arty and metaphorical, as we go from Riggan feeling especially lousy after the blowup between him and Sam, to him looking to his right, down to where the door he came in should be, only now, we push into this surreal scene with Laura making a speech onstage, amidst fog and artificial trees, while men dressed as trees move around her, before panning around to Mike and Lesley lying in bed, waiting for their cue, when he tries to talk her into actually having sex with him. The scene Laura is acting out is part of the play and is meant to be a dream scene, but the piece of dialogue earlier that explains that flits by so fast, you could easily forget it and find yourself watching something that will make you very confused. Granted, the dialogue she's speaking in her part does have some dramatic relevance, as she's talking about an unwanted pregnancy, but it still has me rolling eyes at the deliberately abstract, arty nature of it all, as does that random guy on the street spouting Shakespeare, specifically Macbeth. While something can be said of the parallels between this film and Macbeth, with Birdman himself acting like Lady Macbeth and Riggan's attempt to keep his play from getting closed being similar to how Macbeth attempts to avert the prediction made by the witches, not to mention the moving trees in that one scene with Laura, having that guy actually spouting lines from the play for no reason, other than he's drunk or crazy, feels way too on the nose.
A very frustrating aspect of the movie for me, which is something I'm sure a lot of people praise, is that I'm not sure what it all means. Each time I've watched it, I've ultimately found myself wondering what the point of this entire sequence of events is. I get that Alejandro Inurrito is one of those filmmakers who doesn't like to spell everything out for an audience (like Steven Spielberg and David Lynch, he doesn't do audio commentaries for his films for that very reason) and I don't mind ambiguity at all, but here, it comes off as really pretentious to me. The whole time I was watching it, I thought maybe it was supposed to be about Riggan slowly but surely coming to terms with his past as the star of a profitable superhero film series and that he shouldn't run away from it, as that has as much merit as any thoughtful, introspective Broadway play. I honestly thought that was the point behind the scene on the day the play opens, where Birdman is trying to pull him out of the swamp of depression he's mired in and does so to the point where he feels godlike and untouchable, imagining himself flying over the city. But then, come the night of the play, even though it's going great, he's as depressed as ever, feeling like a complete joke and that all he has to show for his efforts is being a viral sensation due to the number of views the videos of him having to walk around the front of the theater in his underwear got.
He then shoots himself, seemingly desperate to make any sort of mark, even if he's not around to enjoy it, but he survives, gets put in the hospital, and is still not happy, though people are lauding what he did and are praying for his recovery. (He also finally got the flowers he wanted but he can't smell them because of his nose.) The way the bandages on his face seem to create the form of the Birdman mask appears to cement that he'll always be tied to that character and the interpretation of the ending, where he seems to fly off in the sky rather than fall to his death, could be seen as the fruition of that... only, as he's leaving the bathroom, he tells Birdman, whose reflection is in the mirror, "Bye-bye, and fuck you." That seems to clash with what it was going for, unless it means he's managed to tap into his own latent powers that he doesn't need Birdman to use. But, when I think about it, I find myself wondering what all of that has to do with the actual story in the first place. (I understand the concept of "magical realism" and all, but I don't get why placing that in the context of this story was necessary.) Then again, it could be that he did commit suicide and Sam's reaction is one of crazed hysteria at realizing her dad's dead. Maybe that's significance of the quote the movie starts off with, that in death, Riggan has ensured that he will be beloved and remembered, and he's happy about it in his mind before he dies. I just don't know what this movie is really about, and I get that's likely the point and that someone else will have a completely different interpretation of everything I've mentioned and will be able to get something out of it, but it just irritates me more than it fascinates.
And here is where I'm probably going to get a little soapboxy, as this is my biggest issue with the movie: it feels like it's wagging its finger at people who enjoy comic book movies and big spectacle in general and is saying, "Shame on you." I don't mind the story being about how Riggan is trying to reinvent himself as a serious artist and has to deal with a popular movie role that he played years ago constantly hanging over his head, as a number of actors and people in the entertainment industry can definitely relate to that. I also don't mind the theme of popularity versus artistic integrity, as personified by Riggan and Mike and the heated discussions they often have about it. Heck, there's one part of the movie that I actually agree with, which is how people nowadays are far too obsessed with social media and viral fame. In that scene where Mike breaks character during the first preview and yells at the jeering audience, "Stop looking at the world through your cellphone screen! Have a real experience!", I agree, somewhat, with what he's saying (I don't think there's anything wrong with filming something on your phone for posterity but I do think you shouldn't spend your whole life watching stuff through it). But, what I don't like is when various genres, be they comic book movies and other types of blockbusters or even horror and science fiction films, are looked down upon as being irrelevant and not "true art." Granted, there are a good number of those movies that are total junk, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with escapism and wanting to just have a good time with movies, and neither is there anything wrong with actors who find a successful niche within such movies. Now, it's made clear that Riggan was unhappy even when he was Birdman, playing into how he feels like a complete failure, at one point yelling, "I'm the answer to a fucking Trivial Pursuit question!", so that part is understandable. But, when the movie comes off as kind of derisive towards actors who've made it big in comic book films and mega franchises, like Woody Harrelson, Michael Fassbender, Jeremy Renner, and even Robert Downey Jr., with Riggan commenting, "Fuck! They put him in a cape too?!", it feels really snobbish on the filmmakers' part, as it does when Birdman looks right at the camera during that big action non-sequitur and, referring to the actual audience, says, "That's what I'm talking about. Bones rattling! Big, loud, fast! Look at these people, look at their eyes... they're all sparkling. They love this shit. They love blood. They love action. Not this talky, depressing, philosophical bullshit."
Now, before you think I'm making a judgement on Inarritu without really knowing what he thinks about the genre of superhero and comic book movies, allow me to let him speak for himself: "For me superheroes represent that vision of humans as flawless and certain, and all those things that are a delusional projection of how human beings should be. It's almost fascist. There's something very scary about that, the vanity. And for me, humans are exactly contrary to all that. I've never met a human like that. And I'm much more interested in humans, which I find much more dimensional and contradictory and flawed and driven by fears and anxiety, but at the same time, beautiful, pathetic, lovable creatures that I find fascinating. I think the values of the superheroes are in a way affecting the way the military mind works. So I have a conflict, philosophically, with the generations today not being fascinated by our human flaws and possibilities, and everything that's human seems to be boring now. It's scary for me. That's my conflict-that humans seem to be now no longer subject to analysis and observation, and we cannot see ourselves in films because we feel so bad about ourselves. We have been acting so bad in the last years, the world is in such bad shape, that probably the reason, I'm being outspoken here, is there's a shame about seeing humans on the screen. And that's sad." That quote says to me that Inarritu has never actually watched any of these movies, because if he had, he would know that, more often than not, especially nowadays, those characters are portrayed as flawed and complex and not the perfect, vain beings he seems to think they all are. And so, while I'm sure it did have to do with their just being great actors, I can't help but wonder if it was more than a coincidence that he hired people like Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, and Emma Stone, who've been involved with superhero films, to be in the movie, especially with the parallels between Riggan and Keaton's period as Batman. (Speaking of which, isn't it interesting to see Norton railing on the toxic crap he says Hollywood puts out, i.e. the kind of movies Riggan was once in, while in reality, he himself was fired from the Marvel Cinematic Universe after The Incredible Hulk for actually being a little too much like his character here?)
Okay, okay, it could be that I'm being overly defensive and, I admit, this is something that can get me riled up, since I've dealt with it myself, but it strikes a nerve with me whenever somebody feels the need to call people out simply for liking something. I felt the same way when Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola decided to really crap on the popularity of these kinds of movies, especially Coppola, who got particularly nasty about it. My feeling is, "You don't like something? Fine. No foul. But don't try to make people who do enjoy it feel stupid." But, apparently, that's not how it works anymore. And I'm sure I'm going to get some people arguing with me that that's not really what Inurrito was going for here but that's what I took from it and it completely turned me off.
The movie's score is interesting in that all of the original music, composed by Antonio Sanchez, are done completely through jazzy drum solos and percussions, which are orchestrated either to sound casual and light-hearted or more dramatic and even downbeat. Definitely a unique approach and one that I did not expect but welcomed, mainly because I thought it helped the movie a feel little less pretentious and overly arty, rather than if it had incorporated a bunch of solemn string pieces or soft piano, as is usually the norm. It's also offset by a bunch of classical music that you hear during the segments of the play and in the movie's more surreal moments, with a soaring, grandiose piece playing when Riggan flies through New York. The classical music is a bit more of a predictable choice for an arthouse film like this but it does work well where it's placed and it doesn't distract from the effectiveness of the original score. However, the inclusion of so much classical music caused something of a controversy, as it actually kept the score from being considered for an Oscar, something that really irked both Sanchez and Inarritu.
