Birdman: Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

[sikax]

Since winning the Oscar for Best Picture, Birdman has been re-released in theaters. I saw it twice when it first came out in November and saw it again yesterday. It is quite good (second best of 2014 behind Nightcrawler). There are many elements that make this film technically attractive: the unorthodox editing style, giving the illusion of one-take; the acting; the music; and it is visually stunning. It is funny and has an extremely fast tempo, but there is a constant undertone of darkness throughout. The subtlety of this is so impressive, and I hope everyone who enjoyed the movie for its hopping bunny qualities noticed it.The events of the movie make for a great story, just at face value. It's an interesting plot. What I want to talk about is the symbolism of all that happens to Riggan that I feel has gotten lost behind all the excitement (I'm pulling a Troy a la The Dark Knight Rises). So, spoilers ahead if you haven't seen it.


Riggan Thompson is an actor who's known for his role as the popular superhero Birdman twenty years ago. Everyone knows him as the guy who played Birdman (Oh, by the way, he actually does have superpowers. He utilizes them in subtle ways like opening doors telekinetically and things like that). Now in the twilight of his career, he wants to be seen as more well-rounded. So he writes an adaptation of a book for a Broadway production. He's also the director and star of the play. There's a daughter/assistant, a best friend/lawyer, a girlfriend/co-star, another female co-star, and the male co-star (who is a very highly acclaimed theater actor). The casting of the big Broadway actor (Mike) is crucial in getting the word out for the play, which no one expects will be any good until Mike gets involved.

Mike shows up for rehearsals and immediately challenges Riggan and the other actors to bring raw emotion and real shit to the play. There are several instances of physical violence as a result of Mike's egging on. But all involved emerge satisfied with the quality of the performances.

Also, Riggan's daughter, Sam, has troubles with past drug use and her largely absent movie star father while she grew up. She and Mike flirt together and at one point are seen making out by Riggan, who uses that emotion and energy to fulfill a scene in the play really well (and punches the shit out of Mike).

So it goes on like this for a while. Rehearsals and previews and running into critics and ex-wives who all think this is a huge mistake. But Riggan is determined to make this play work for him. To him the success of it will validate him as a person. Proving this to himself and putting everything out there will also improve his strained relationship with Sam. There are many drunken nights with Mike that end up in someone getting punched or passing out on the street. This comes to a head when Riggan is out getting drunk and sees a theater critic who is notorious for being very strict and whose reviews single-handedly make or break a play. She's at the other end of the bar, writing something on a notepad. Riggan goes over to her, drunk, and starts berating her about how she's such a high and mighty elitist who doesn't know what putting her soul out there is like and all this stuff. She rebuts by essentially laughing him off as a "Hollywood type" and that she is going to kill the play which premiers the next night. Riggan throws a glass at the wall and storms out of the bar. He passes out on the street, hallucinates that he's flying around, and ends up back at the theater the morning before the premier.

On several occasions, Riggan is visited by his alter ego, Birdman. Birdman is the voice in his head that tries to convince him that being a big-budget superhero movie star is the correct path and that that's what he should be doing. "Make Birdman 4! Everyone wants a sequel. We'll hire Ryan Gosling" and shit like that. You know, the antithesis to the struggling artist that he's trying to be. Riggan always wins in the end, but Birdman is a constant splinter in his mind.

At one rehearsal, Mike, the extreme method actor that he is, tells Riggan to get a less phony-looking gun for the final scene where Riggan's character first threatens Mike's character and his lover and then proceeds to kill himself. The night of the premier, we see Riggan in his dressing room having a heart-to-heart with his ex-wife/Sam's mother about life and their relationships with Sam and whatnot. He says a lot of cryptic shit surrounding his career choices and redemption and all that.

He tells his ex-wife a story about how when they broke up, he attempted to drown himself in the ocean. When he walked out into the water he started to feel a stinging sensation on his back and then started feeling it all over. He was covered with jellyfish. He frantically got to shore and rolled around like a maniac it burned so bad. The jellyfish stinging him saved his life, albeit quite painfully. This. THIS summed up the whole movie. He's in a downward spiral career-wise and the thing that will save it is this disastrous experience of putting on this play. It is painful and agonizing for everyone, but it is his salvation. And the symbolism becomes very acute in the final scenes.

When it's time for the final scene of the play, he gets his (real) gun and heads for the stage. They do the scene extremely well and when it's time for him to kill himself, we see him from behind pull the trigger. Standing ovation.

We cut to a hospital. Turns out Riggan shot his nose off. His friend and ex-wife and daughter are there. When he wakes up, they show him the rave reviews in the papers. The stern critic lady wrote that it was phenomenal and that Riggan had reinvented the theater. All are happy. Everyone leaves the room and Riggan goes to the bathroom mirror where he sees the mask that they put on him. The mask is visually similar to his Birdman mask, and he removes it, revealing his new nose. This is the final validation for him. The mask is gone, Birdman is gone, he is reinvented. It took shooting his own nose off to get where he wanted, but he was going to die anyway a miserable has-been. Jellyfish.

Then he jumps out the window. The final shot is Sam rushing back in and over to the window in horror but then slowly gazes upward, following her flying father, and smiles.






tldr version: Go see Birdman.

[Unvoiced_Apollo]

So I saw this this past weekend. I understand why this won best picture, which is really a round about way of me saying I didn't really get it. Well I got most of it. I didn't get the ending though.

[Boomer]

I think the ending is meant to be so weird and ambiguous that everyone can pretty much interpret it as they please. Whatever you want that ending to mean, that's what it means; there is no wrong answer.

[sikax]

What didn't you get about the ending? Which part?

[Unvoiced_Apollo]

What didn't you get about the ending? Which part?

I'm trying to figure out if they were saying if he really did have powers. Stone dud look up and smile but I have no idea if she saw him really flying or if there was something else to that reaction.

[sikax]

I got the impression that he did have powers. From the very first shot of him levitating in his underwear to throwing shit around his dressing room etc. Maybe those were supposed to be fantastical imaginations, but the fact that Sam was looking up in the final shot, I mean, he clearly didn't go *down*.

[Unvoiced_Apollo]

I got the impression that he did have powers. From the very first shot of him levitating in his underwear to throwing shit around his dressing room etc. Maybe those were supposed to be fantastical imaginations, but the fact that Sam was looking up in the final shot, I mean, he clearly didn't go *down*.

I got the impression that those were in his head, especially after his "flight" when he got out of the taxi. They were simply manifestations of him coping with his stress and failures.

"fact that Sam was looking up in the final shot, I mean, he clearly didn't go *down*."

Unless he did and Sam is having her own break. Or it's us seeing through Riggan's eyes after death and how he wished Sam saw him. Or maybe he did have powers. Or another possibility I haven't read.

[sikax]

All possible, I suppose.

[thesalmonofdoubt]

I got the impression that those were in his head, especially after his "flight" when he got out of the taxi. They were simply manifestations of him coping with his stress and failures.

"fact that Sam was looking up in the final shot, I mean, he clearly didn't go *down*."

Unless he did and Sam is having her own break. Or it's us seeing through Riggan's eyes after death and how he wished Sam saw him. Or maybe he did have powers. Or another possibility I haven't read.

Yeah - watched this last night and liked it a lot. Had a hard time actually getting into it tho, which was probably more of a head space thing than a reflection on the quality of the movie. Beautifully shot, interesting composition, pretty theatrical "heavy on the dialogue" script..

Having said all that - I totally did not think that his superpowers were supposed to be real in any way at all .. in fact they kinda went to pains to make the point that his super powers were simply delusions from his POV.. We see him using his powers to trash his room - when his lawyer mate walks in, you see him physically throwing crap around the place. He flies off the top of the building but then they make a point of the taxi driver - also, even tho this is in broad day light and there are several people on the street watching him land, no one comments.

The end scene is think is deliberately ambiguous. I don't really know if there is meant to be an actual explanation for why she looks up instead of down. There's quite a few possibilities tho .. I took it to mean, he actually did shoot himself in the head in the final act of the play, falls into a coma type thing where he completes his own story. By shooting himself in the head he kills his alter ego (birdman) and incorporates the alter ego into his own persona and by doing so - is right with the world .. everything he struggled with falls into place. He restores his relationship with his daughter (she even brings him the right flowers) .. his play gets rave reviews (even from the hard nosed be-atch) .. he even physically transforms into a combination of himself and the birdman .. He jumps out of the window, there's screams and an ambulance siren but the daughter only see's his final transformation into him as birdman/father and is happy that he's closed his own story.

[Gendo]

Yeah I was surprised to read "Oh, by the way, he actually does have superpowers" in your OP. Like the other replies, I'm pretty sure all of that was in his head. I believe that the taxi driver scene makes it quite clear. In his mind he was flying to the theater, while at the same time, in reality, he was taking a cab there.

I don't think the ending was supposed to make you question "oh, maybe he really can fly after all". I see it as much more symbolic. What exactly it's symbolic of is up to interpretation though. I mean, it wasn't meant to be a realistic part of the story... his daughter's reaction to looking up isn't exactly how a person would respond in real life if they saw their father suddenly flying. I'm not saying that the ending was all in his head, though. Rather more like it was in the director/writer's head.

If I had to guess the symbolism, it just meant that he was free or happy.

[BruceSmith78]

By the end I really didn't care if he had powers, I was just happy it was over.

[Unvoiced_Apollo]

Another thought regarding the theory of San having her own break: The subtitle is "The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance". What if Sam looking up & smiling is her dissociating from the traumatic event of seeing her dead father's body, thereby remaining ignorant of the reality of the events.

[sikax]

Cuz she's high

[Unvoiced_Apollo]

Cuz she's high

Another justification for the subtitle.