![\"birdman\"](\"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/birdman.jpg\")
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Shortly after seeing Birdman<\/a>, I happened to begin reading Henry Miller\u2019s Tropic of Cancer<\/a>. It was good timing as I quickly realized that both works have a strong focus on the creative process and what happens in the minds of artists. They also both share a strong disdain towards the popular works of their time. Miller writes:<\/p>\n \u201cThere is only one thing which interests me vitally now, and that is the recording of all which is omitted in books. Nobody, so far as I can see, is making use of those elements in the air which give direction and motivation to our lives\u2026The age demands violence, but we are only getting aborted explosions\u2026Passion is quickly exhausted. Men fall back on ideas, comme d\u2019habitude. Nothing is proposed that can last more than 24 hours.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Miller was talking about writing and politics\u2014failed revolutions. But as I began thinking about Birdman in order to write this review, I kept thinking about that quote, and how perfectly it seems to summarize the state of film today:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe age demands violence, but we are only getting aborted explosions.\u201d That sounds like superhero movies to me.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cPassion is quickly exhausted.\u201d The immediate gratification and empty calories of Man of Steel<\/a> or Amazing Spider-Man<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n Birdman is not a superhero movie, but it is a film about superhero movies. And about art, and passion, and the struggle for meaning, and the horrific feeling of drowning that accompanies irrelevancy.<\/span><\/p>\n Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) is a washed-up actor, famous for playing the superhero Birdman in a series of movies in the 80s and 90s, who is now trying to mount a Broadway play and re-establish his career. He is directing and starring in an adaptation, which he wrote, of Raymond Carver\u2019s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love<\/a>. Unfortunately, the production begins going to hell when one of his actors becomes incapacitated two days before the first preview performance. Riggan\u2019s producer, Jake (Zach Galifianakis) convinces him to hire famous stage actor Mike Shiner (Edward Norton) who agrees to join the production because his girlfriend, Lesley (Naomi Watts) is playing the female lead. Mike is a professional who memorizes the entire script in a day, but is also erratic, egotistical, and prone to violent outbursts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Pressure comes down on Riggan as every preview performance turns into a disaster, often due to Mike. Meanwhile, he must deal with his recovering drug addict daughter (Emma Stone) his pregnant girlfriend (Andrea Riseborough) and the looming specter of the Birdman character he once played, whose voice haunts him\u2014Keaton\u2019s own, in a parody of Christian Bale\u2019s gritty Batman<\/a> voice\u2014and drives him to lash out in fits of destruction.<\/span><\/p>\n At its core, Birdman is about identity. To the public, Riggan is a beloved superhero. But that isn\u2019t enough for him\u2014it\u2019s too low-brow. The admiration he receives isn\u2019t the right<\/i> kind of admiration, so he launches this vanity project play in order to make something \u201cmeaningful\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n Riggan is forced to choose between the two sides of himself: the wannabe tortured artist seeking to create something powerful and moving, or the pop comic book hero he already is\u2014\u201cYou are Birdman. The people love you. You are a god to them,\u201d says the voice in his head. And it\u2019s through this conflict that Birdman brings the violence our age demands. I won\u2019t give too much away, but there\u2019s an important line about the significance of \u201cspilling real blood\u201d. Edward Norton\u2019s character, for instance, is a method actor who demands as much realism on stage as possible (drinking real gin and requesting a real gun be pointed at him). Telling the truth on stage is what matters\u2014that\u2019s where blood must be spilled. Real life is secondary to creating something honest. Superhero movies don\u2019t spill blood (they\u2019re all rated PG-13). They\u2019re spurts of weak passion that quickly dry up\u2014\u201caborted explosions,\u201d as Miller puts it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Birdman is a creature that is destroying Riggan, a ghoul from his past that he can\u2019t escape. If he accepts himself as Birdman then he compromises his soul and resigns to being a washed-up comic book character for the rest of his life. He has true passion within him that needs to be unleashed. He has to prove that he is not Birdman. But the world is stacked against him, convinced that he\u2019s incapable of achieving anything more than pop trash. In Tropic of Cancer, Miller writes about wanting to create what will become known as \u201ca new Bible\u2014The Last Book,\u201d a work so triumphant it will shake the world of literature. Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu, like Miller, cuts to the heart of this type of desire. In Riggan, I\u00f1\u00e1rritu has created a character who recognizes that art is bigger than any one man. The results are slick and flashy. The spectacle of giant alien monsters and massive armies are lampooned and outdone by the spectacle of theatre and flowing camerawork. Birdman is a testament to the passion and chaos of creation. Superhero movies may buy the mansions, but they don\u2019t achieve the highest goal of art\u2014to let the blood pour out in front of the audience and reveal a truth.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Shortly after seeing Birdman<\/a>, I happened to begin reading Henry Miller\u2019s Tropic of Cancer<\/a>. While I\u2019ve yet to finish it, both works have a strong focus on the creative process and what happens in the minds of artists. They also both share a strong disdain towards the popular works of their time. Miller writes:<\/p>\n \u201cThere is only one thing which interests me vitally now, and that is the recording of all which is omitted in books. Nobody, so far as I can see, is making use of those elements in the air which give direction and motivation to our lives\u2026The age demands violence, but we are only getting aborted explosions\u2026Passion is quickly exhausted. Men fall back on ideas, comme d\u2019habitude. Nothing is proposed that can last more than 24 hours.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,4361],"tags":[4487,4486,278,4481,4484,4336,4482,4485,4488,4483,4489],"class_list":["post-5621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts","category-brads-reviews","tag-amazing-spider-man","tag-amazing-spiderman","tag-batman","tag-birdman","tag-birdman-review","tag-brad-avery","tag-henry-miller","tag-man-of-steel","tag-raymond-carver","tag-tropic-of-cancer","tag-what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-love"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5621"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5638,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5621\/revisions\/5638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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