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Vertigo Ambrosia posted:The point isn't that Reagan deserves to be taken seriously as an artist and not just as a blockbuster superhero actor, but that the concept of high art vs. low art (dramatic theater vs. titillating film) is complete loving bullshit. The critic character is really obnoxiouisly on the nose about the debate (she's a real weak point of the film, particularly the scene where Reagan confronts her), but remember what she ends up writing; after deriding the entire genre of action films, she ends up praising a dude actually shooting himself in a scene where he commits suicide. She, and the theater community in general, enjoys cheap violence and gore just as much as the people who saw all the Birdman films to see him fly around and beat up monsters. We're all watching an independent film by a famous director where Michael Keaton flies around in the air and walks around in his underwear, and that doesn't make us philistines. I came away with the reading that it's not about the quality of art, it's about honesty. In order for his play to work, he has to spill real blood. Like the Rolling Stones song, "If I could stick my pen in my heart, spill it all over the stage." It's a film about pouring yourself into your work and giving the truth to the audience, and how loving hard it is and how vulnerable you are doing it. The audience isn't cheering when Riggan shoots himself because they want blood and gore and spectacle, it's because they just witnessed an artist literally spilling his blood, sweat and tears in front of them. It's not cheap at all. The superhero movies he had been doing were inauthentic. They were for pay, soulless works. And so the play is a challenge for Riggan to create something that truly expresses the weight he feels everyday of his life. And the tension is about whether he's actually capable of that or not. Note how his line readings at the beginning of the film are forced, weak acting. By the end we believe every word he's saying. It's an amazing transformation.
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Nov 11, 2014 20:07
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 02:14 |
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Why do we assume Emma Stone's reaction is happy in the final shot? Working at a theatre, I've been able to catch the final scene a few times. And each time her facial expression becomes even more and more ambiguous. Perhaps she is elated to see him flying, or maybe she's in a shock, unsure of how to react to the image of her fathers splattered corpse. Her smile could be either awe-inspired, or delirium. It's a fantastic bit of acting, and not having an image to put the shot with keeps it forever ambiguous.
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Nov 12, 2014 05:32
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resurgam40 posted:But, the rest of the film is deeply symbolic/metaphorical, to the degree that you can't really be sure that what you're seeing onscreen is really happening, or just symbolic of what's happening. I think it's kind of a mistake to merely subscribe all that to Riggan being crazy, to think he jumped to his death at the end. To my mind, the scene at the end means freedom, rather than death; Riggan had a problem at the beginning and he found a way to solve it, and this liberates him so much that he feels like he can fly. That's all the ending says to me; no need to bring suicide into it. Exactly. It doesn't matter whether he flies or dies. That's why we're not told. It doesn't matter if the hallucinations are "real" because it's all theatre and cinema. Everything we've witnessed is fake. It's about the soul of the character, not about solving a nonexistant puzzle. It's the same thing with the spinning top in Inception: Everyone's so preoccupied trying to figure out whether it's a dream or not using context clues that they overlook that the point of the scene is that Cobb doesn't care.
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Nov 12, 2014 21:19
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Chronicles posted:I took the fire to be phoenix imagery. He's a bird(man) who dies and is reborn. That's why I can't buy that he's dead at the end. Emma Stone's reaction is signifying that she's reconnected with her father. They understand each other now. That's definitely what her reaction means. But it doesn't mean he's alive or dead. Riggan will always exist in a Schrodinger's Cat type state of both living and dead, because that's where the movie ends. Unless there's a sequel.
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Nov 17, 2014 16:50
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I like Zach Galifianakis movies so I liked this one.
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Nov 21, 2014 19:07
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Birdman being a winged hero makes sense with Icarus flying too close to the sun.
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Nov 23, 2014 17:00
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 02:14 |
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chemosh6969 posted:I'm dreading all the indie films that are going to start making films in one take again, 99.9% of which will be incredibly awful. It was bad phase the last time around and it isn't like it'll be any better this round. I didn't realize this was ever a thing. The only other film I know that's done it, barring something experimental like Wavelength, is Russian Ark. edit: I guess Rope would count too, since like Birdman, it masks the cuts. TrixRabbi fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Jan 27, 2015 |
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Jan 27, 2015 17:51
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