Birdman or: (The Unexpected Usefulness of Intimidation)
Birdman or: (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), the fifth feature from Alejandro González Iñárritu, is a film that uniquely intimidates me. When I first watched it, early in my reviewing career, I was a vehement member of the ‘a film is worth watching if the Oscars and iMDB say so’ club, eager to hunt down the films I had heard of, but hadn’t watched, that had made the list in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.
No surprise, then, that a film about the nonsense of cultural criticism and artistic ego disturbed me at the time. Here was a piece of art presenting the ultimate challenge to my limited view of ‘worthy films’. It shouts as loud as it can about how the pursuit of critical praise and awards results in vapid, deeply unsatisfying pieces of art — and it wins Best Film at the Academy Awards in 2015. The intellectual anxiety that Birdman produced in me back then was productive. There were lessons to be learned from such anxiety.
So, five years on, and I’ve absorbed some of those lessons. Oscars aren’t everything; nor are recommendations. I can be more detached from the argument between faded superhero star Riggan (Michael Keaton) and theatre critic Tabitha (Lindsay Duncan), and see their spat as it is: tennis-court vitriol hurled by two people equally on the defensive about their views on valid artistic expression. Our protagonist’s takedown of Tabitha’s stuck-up, exclusionary attitude should not be taken as the final word, and neither should Tabitha’s expression of hatred for celebrities like Riggan.
Why, then, if I could approach the film from a more mature perspective, did the same rush of anxiety strike me after the credits had rolled? The feeling seemed to be breaking the illusion that I had made any progression at all in understanding films, and being able to talk about them meaningfully. Birdman shows its central character Riggan being berated for two hours by his own inner voice and by those around him, and in doing so provides a feeling of disorientating intimidation. Watching Birdman is, for me, like being told, by someone that matters, that I have as little a clue as Riggan does. Impostor syndrome, then. How Birdman provokes this feeling merits careful explanation.
Part of the feeling is naturally explained by the stylistic conceit of the film. Antonio Sánchez’s drum score, an expression of Riggan’s incessant inner turmoil, unnerving in its vibrancy, weaves in and out of the film. This happens literally at two points: Riggan walks with his fellow actor Mike Shiner (Edward Norton) to a bar, and at one point they pass a street drummer performing the score of the film. Later on, the same street drummer is seen playing away backstage before Riggan walks towards his bloody onstage climax. The music flows in and out of the story world, as Oscar van Heiningen’s thesis is quite right to say; it is a destabilising force, greatly entertaining and effective in its rareness.
Equally impossible to miss is the film’s self-presentation, for the most part, as a seamless, one-take sequence . It’s a technique with a long history, going back to Hitchcock’s Rope, which has seen a lot of popularity in the past few years alone, from the (gloriously silly) Hardcore Henry to the much-celebrated 1917. The latter, however, does not benefit from its self-styling as a continuous shot anywhere near as much as Birdman does. There is a form of magical realism is at work in the film, separate from Riggan’s superhuman abilities of telekinesis and flying: we are shown explicitly, at multiple points, that the backstage sequences are not happening in ‘real time’. The moment after Riggan breaks a vase while on his own in his dressing room, the camera turns and finds Riggan sitting down for questions with some reporters; we move from Shiner fooling around with Riggan’s daughter Sam (Emma Stone), above the wings of the theatre, straight down to the stage, where Shiner is acting his character in a preview of Riggan’s play.
The film’s technique intimidates in another way: Birdman is, in this respect, a show of extreme skill. It is natural for anyone with a creative bone in their body, I should think, to feel insecure of their own ability when presented with a well-made piece of art such as this one, which can handle itself so deftly on a technical level.
We are treated to a similar deftness on the screenwriting side of things. Crucial here is how we navigate the play Riggan is directing, producing, and co-starring in: an adaptation of Raymond Carver’s short story What We Talk about When We Talk About Love. The film is, for the majority of the runtime, a protracted backstage drama, taking some influence from Noises Off.
The title of Carver’s work and Riggan’s production is inescapably linked with the film’s characters off stage: romantic and familial love is all over the place. Riggan is struggling to find a grip on his relationships with Sam and his ex-wife (Amy Ryan), who tells him that he always mistakes love for admiration. He’s also navigating a turbulent fling with fellow actor Laura (Andrea Riseborough). Shiner’s girlfriend Lesley (Naomi Watts) breaks up with him after his extremely inappropriate behaviour onstage. It’s no mistake that the Carver quote which opens the film — also displayed on his tombstone — is also very much about love, a point doubled down by the frenetic removal of the quote’s letters until we are left with A M O R for a fleeing moment on the screen.
Even the play’s text is echoed in the lives of the actors. In a moment that is both tender and ludicrously short, Laura ruminates on her failed pregancy for about five seconds (“I really wanted to be a mom, but my body doesn’t seem to agree”) before she glides on to the stage, talking, in character, about an unwanted pregnancy while surrounded by people dressed as trees. Riggan’s character Nick tells a story about an old couple who survive a car crash, after which, for a time, the old husband, in a cast from head to toe, complains that he can’t turn to see his wife’s face; at the close of the film, after Riggan’s botched suicide attempt on stage, Sam brings him flowers that he can’t smell.
If these metatextual elements sound confusing and rather involved, it’s because they are. They can be discovered only after reflection about the film, which, as one watches it, is extremely entertaining, and very funny, more than anything else. The analysis naturally comes afterwards (a dynamic reminiscent, to me, especially of Don Quixote). But the analysis does away with some of the film’s power of intimidation: my post-credits anxiety came about partly because there was just so much to chew over, after the delighted feeding frenzy of the runtime.
So, Birdman goes to great lengths to dislodge the idea that what we are watching is a straightforward piece of art. But this dislodging becomes, to my mind, a conscious tactic of intimidation. Riggan’s dressing-room mirror has a printed quote stuck on to it: “A thing is a thing, not what is said of that thing”. The quote sums up the tactic: accuse the critic of being powerless to say anything true about a piece of art! Incidentally, that is exactly the tactic Riggan himself uses against Tabitha and her arsenal of highfalutin critical labels. Brandishing a flower in her face, he asks, “Do you even know what that is? You don’t. You know why? Because you can’t see this thing if you don’t know how to label it. You mistake all those little noises in your head for true knowledge”. In Riggan’s eyes, I would be guilty of the same crimes as Tabitha: “It’s just a bunch of crappy opinions, backed up by even crappier comparisons…”
One answer to the intimidation tactic is to say, simply, that Riggan’s takedown of Tabitha is one of the many manifestations of Riggan’s insecurity that is exposed during the film. But it will take more than a pithy statement like that to shake the fear that reviewing Birdman is pointless in the first place. That’s a thought that will less easily be done away with just by thinking about the film and talking, video-essay style, about how clever it is. Riggan’s egoism, its manifestations, and its antidote, need to be explored properly, if proper confidence in understanding art is to be regained.
Birdman landed in 2015, at a time where the meteoric rise of superhero movies didn’t seem to be stopping any time soon. The current pandemic has given us a special pause for thought. For the past year now, we have not been presented with the normal regularity of increasingly frequent releases from the megalithic brands of modern cinema. We’re having a break from the messages of those films, chief among them being the poisonous American ideology of rugged masculine individualism.
Riggan has been drinking that poison for 25 years by the time he decides to put on a Carver play. The ego trip that we see him traverse over the course of the film is a symptom of the poison. He is accompanied on his journey by an inner monologue, the voice of his ’90s superhero identity Birdman, whose second-bass gravel is matched only by Karl Urban’s Judge Dredd. The voice alternately demeans Riggan (“What are you trying to prove, that you’re an artist? Well, you’re not!”) and proclaims Riggan’s superiority (“You tower over these other theatre douchebags”).
How Riggan engages with the voice of his ego, and what it tells him about himself, stages the film’s engagement with Buddhist philosophy. It’s no mistake that the first time we see Riggan, he is meditating — a practice aimed at quieting the mind’s incessant stream of consciousness. He tries to brush away the influence the voice has over him with shallow mantras (“Breathing in…I embrace my anger”), but ultimately succumbs to it when, enraged by its provocations, he trashes his dressing room halfway through the film, and, more significantly, when he leans into his delusions and appears to himself to fly above the streets of New York.
The film’s subtitle (‘The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance’) is, some argue, a Buddhist joke by Ińárritu: ignorance is a root of suffering, not a virtue. As a classicist, the temptation to read in an Aristotelian perspective is nearly irresistible. We find a discussion in the Nicomachean Ethics — generally speaking, a treatise on human virtue — on what makes an action voluntary, and therefore worthy of praise or blame. An action is voluntary if it is done in ignorance, but not if it is done because of ignorance. Tabitha says she will destroy Riggan’s play with a terrible review, because she hates Riggan, a celebrity who is ignorant of the world of the theatre. Would Tabitha be making a mistake in Aristotle’s eyes?
In any case, Tabitha’s review of the play after opening night supports the idea that the subtitle is a joke. The review, which itself provides the film’s subtitle, is glowing, but the words are trite and meaningless: “Thompson has unwittingly given birth to a new form that can only be described as ‘super-realism’. Blood was spilled both literally and metaphorically by artist and audience alike, real blood; the blood that has been sorely missing from the veins of the American theatre”. Tabitha seems to consider that Riggan’s act of nasal self-destruction is the only brilliant aspect about the play. She is doubtless right: the two scenes that we see of the production multiple times during the previews are, on the face of it, loaded with melodrama and badly acted.
But Riggan’s attempted suicide is a one-off: it can’t be replicated for future productions. It is also an example of the well-known phenomenon of a gendered suicide: that is, a performative, masculine act of violence, the familiar and tragic result of toxic masculinity and a lack of healthy self-understanding. Riggan’s inner Birdman voice seems to encourage Riggan’s suicide when he is standing on a rooftop, just before he apparently jumps off and starts flying: “We have to end it on our own terms, with a grand gesture. Flames, sacrifice, Icarus… You can do it.” Male suicidal ideation is presented, in Riggan’s case, as the result of an overloading of ego, rather than the collapse of self-worth.
Riggan’s suicide attempt is the object of praise from Tabitha. Riggan’s ex-wife is the voice of reason, outraged that Riggan’s act of self-destruction has become a vehicle of success. To put it bluntly: that Riggan has “given birth to a new genre” is meaningless, since the genre is inaccessible to any actor who is not willing to shoot themselves just because that is what their character is meant to do. The voice of the critic in the film is first limited and abrasive, then extremely unhelpful, praising Riggan’s suicide attempt, thereby enabling further glorification of suicide. The viewer of Birdman is challenged to be a better, more sensitive critic — and that’s an intimidating challenge.
Iñárritu is currently working on restoring Amores Perros, his stirring feature-length debut, for its 20th anniversary. I had not seen any of his pre-Birdman films before last year, although The Revenant had somewhat prepared me for the many journeys of suffering to be found in the ‘Death Trilogy’ and Biutiful. Some people had definitely had enough of seeing such journeys by the time Biutiful’s credits rolled — including, maybe, Iñárritu himself. After enduring the emotional battering of his first four films, Birdman was a desirably fresh venture into the worlds of black comedy, metatheatre, and magical realism.
But is Birdman really all that different from the other stories Iñárritu has been celebrated for? The film is as engaged with human connection and its challenges as much as it is with the ideas of art, criticism, and relevance. In particular, there is one crucial element common to his six films that I wish to call attention to — an element more indicative of Iñárritu and his fellow writers’ priorities than vague talk about the ‘human condition’. That is the centrality of the parent-child relationship, particularly at the end of his films.
A summary of the evidence is in order. The final story of Amores Perrosfollows ‘El Chivo’ and his efforts to reconnect with his daughter Maru. The ending of 21 Grams sees Christina (Naomi Watts) tentatively preparing for her new child, and Jack (Benicio del Toro) returning to his family. The final (and beautiful) shot of Babel glides away from Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi) as she and her father Yasujiro (Kôji Yakusho) hold each other tightly. Biutiful closes as it opens with Uxbal (Javier Bardem) reuniting with his dead father. Finally, Birdman’s last scene sees Riggan and Sam sharing a small, tender moment of connection in Riggan’s hospital ward, when Sam leans her head on Riggan’s chest. Sam leaves to get a vase for the flowers she has brought, Riggan steps out on to the window ledge, and disappears. Sam returns, rushes in a panic to the window, looks up into the sky, and smiles.
So what does this mean for Birdman? If nothing else, Sam’s role in the film is amplified by the knowledge that parental relationships take up so much space in Iñárritu’s filmography. Even without this context, though, Sam clearly serves a vital role in the film. She is the direct and explicit antithesis to Riggan’s egoism: she rants at Riggan that he is putting on the play only to feel “relevant” again, and that he is “not important”. The ending, on one reading at least, shows that Sam has been invited into Riggan’s imagination, and can see what he sees in himself.
By unlocking Riggan’s compassionate side only for a moment, Sam plays a key role. Without her, Riggan’s final rejection and silencing of his inner Birdman voice would not happen. The real ramifications of this for Riggan’s world are clear in the final shot, which is of Sam and Sam alone. Riggan’s story isn’t just about Riggan any more — his ego trip has come to an end, only when room is made for someone else. There are, admittedly, moments earlier in the film that detach from Riggan’s perspective, such as Shiner’s backstage argument with Lesley after his unacceptable behaviour on stage. But, one way or another, these moments are as tied up in conflict and self-centredness as Riggan’s journey is. There are no moments of unfiltered joy in the film, or of true detachment from oneself, until the very end.
All the renditions, in Iñárritu’s films, of the parental relationship up to Birdman were heartfelt and contemplative. But Birdman’s ending is by far the most complicated. That is because the film frames the problems of human connection in a way with which we are less familiar, and therefore less comfortable. It’s no wonder that co-writers Dinelaris and Giacobone apparently found the father-daughter relationship the hardest thing to depictin the film. Sam’s rant about Riggan’s selfishness is reinforced implicitly by her explaining the practice she learned from rehab of marking loo roll with tiny dashes to indicate the 150,000 years humans have been around, a tiny amount of time compared with the earth’s lifespan of billions of years.
Sam’s rigorous challenging of her father’s perspective is a dynamic unique to Birdman. It is a dynamic that slots in perfectly with the many challenges the film presents to the viewer and the critic. The challenge that Sam presents to Riggan becomes a challenge to the viewer: we are prompted to ask ourselves whether we need to update our ideas of how human connection is supposed to work. Are we any better than Riggan? Are our human relationships any better than the deeply flawed ones he has?
And so we arrive back at love: the secret to seeing the ultimate usefulness of the artistic intimidation that Birdman generates. The questions raised by the exploration of Riggan’s ego, and the exploration of the nature of criticism, cannot be answered without attaining a selfless, loving perspective — which Sam represents. Birdman disorientates and intimidates, but not simply for the sake of it. There is a solution to my post-credits anxiety: listen to the call for a new perspective, to the call for selfless connection, with which one will understand and enjoy other people’s art, and without which one is doomed to the same anxiety in the future. Disorientation, such as the kind that Birdman invokes, is at once entertaining and informative.
Art credit: Ethan Coyne, https://www.instagram.com/mort.simpson/