Birdman, or the unexpected virtue of ignorance

“-And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?

-I did

-And what did you want?

-To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.” Raymond Carver, late fragment.

This time there’s no smart catchy title. There’s not because of two reasons: the first is that it has already a smart subtitle which we’ll talk about later, and the second, is that it would be too long (sorry for the bad joke). Birdman is a controversial film, a different one. It is a movie idolized by many, but hated by many others. This movie has a very particular style, tone, and overall story complexity, which the director Alejandro González Iñárritu delivers us in the shape of an apparent one-shot film, that helps the narrative and gives it more and more layers of meaning. Technically speaking that is by itself a huge achievement, which few movies have accomplished, such as the 1960’s classic “The Apartment” by Billy Wilder and 2019’s “1917” by Sam Mendes.

The story follows Riggan Thomson (portrayed by Michael Keaton), a decaying actor who after 20 years of his success because of his role as a superhéroe called “Birdman” tries to revive his career and enter once again to the spotlight, by adapting, directing, and starring in a new Broadway play titled “What do we talk about when we talk about love”. He does it all for attention, to prove to himself, and most importantly to the world, that he is better than just a bird. In the entire movie, he is chased by his character, Birdman, who keeps telling things to boost his ego and make him feel powerful. For the entire course of this story, everything he does is about recovering power, because he had power when he was Birdman, he was famous, a celebrity loved by everyone, but now, he can’t escape it. He can’t be Riggan Thomson, he can just be recognized as Birdman, and the few moments when he accepts it, we see him empowered, with supernatural abilities, because time and time he repeats to himself “I’m better than anyone, I’m above all”.

What I think is great about this film is that the one-shot effect makes it feel as if we’re dreaming, and it lets us experience things in a more first point-of-view way, living the theatre, and being in the middle of the scenes, feeling the authenticity. Again and again, we see Riggan use “magic powers” or supernatural abilities, all disproved by the following action, which makes us doubt about the reality and objectivity of the point of view we’re looking at. Almost at the end, while Riggan walks through the set, we see a man playing the drums, playing the entire soundtrack we’ve been hearing since the beginning of the movie, and then we start to question ourselves about what is real and what isn’t.

There are many moments throughout the film where a little deduction is needed, because in total he tries to kill himself three times (excluding the jellyfish and the ocean story), and the way I see it, the time he jumped off the building, he died, and everything that comes after, is an illusion of what he wanted, because for the first time everything goes perfect: the play, him being relevant and important, the relation with his daughter, the relation with his ex-wife, the review of the play, and so on. He finally sees things as he wanted, because he believes that all it takes is sacrifice, that because he gave it all, and he poured his heart, soul, mind, financial assets, and his life into this, that he needed to succeed.

He tries and tries, failing time after time, to feed his ego, to get reassurance that he is important. In one “scene” (I put scene quote on quote because it’s all supposed to be one long take) where Riggan is talking to his daughter, Sam (played by Emma Stone) she says, and I quote: “You’re scared to death, like the rest of us, that you don’t matter. And you’re right. You don’t. It’s not important. You’re not important. Get used to it”. I believe that quote is very important to the meaning of the film, and what in my perspective, Iñarritu wanted us to keep. We all think we deserve better, we all think we’re protagonists of our own story, and that because of that, we’re supposed to succeed. Well we’re not, and many of us won’t. It hurts but it’s true.

Let’s get back to the quote I wrote at the top, which not coincidentally, it’s the quote that opened the movie. The quote said exactly what the main character, Riggan Thomson, wants: to feel beloved on earth. Now let’s assume I’m a “film detective” and I’m about to solve this case: I’m going to talk about something that seems to not have any conexion, but when I’m done, everything will make sense. Let’s talk about another thing from the beginning of this article, the title. Why is it called “The unexpected virtue of ignorance”? Well, if you saw the movie you would know that that is the title of the review of the play, made by the theatre critic Tabitha Dickinson (played by Lindsay Duncan), which earlier in the film told Riggan she was going to destroy him and his play. So yes, the title of the movie is the title of the review, but why? Just to make a meta-reference? To break the fourth wall? No… too simple. Iñarritu didn’t craft this masterpiece for such a weak connection. So then? Let’s go back, one more time, to the quote at the beginning and find out what is the most important thing for Riggan: to feel beloved, to be important. The movie has many messages, many meanings, many powerful, deep critics, but the most important thing for Riggan, the highlight of his story is not all of that, it's not what we can learn of it, it’s not about his family or relations, it’s about the great review he got, because at the end, weather we like it or not, all of us, or at least a big big big part of us, are narcissistic, selfish, materialists, superficial, with a big ego that grows every minute and needs to be feeded, and we care above all about our image, our success, our happiness, our relevance, ourselves.