What is the meaning of reality? What makes people’s lives purposeful? Can someone become immortal by becoming a star? Would becoming a star be the key to permanent and actual happiness in life?
Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu’s Birdman grapples with these questions by interrogating the meaning of an actor’s existence in the world. The film depicts a washed-up actor named Riggan Thomson’s inner struggle to create original artwork. It focuses on his problematic relationships with his daughter, girlfriend, ex-wife, and friends in his last chance to become artistically relevant in the modern world.
The film begins with two seemingly unrelated images: A fiery meteor hurtling through the sky and a sea of dead jellyfish. These represent Riggan’s career, which is stalling and coming to an end, prompting a final attempt to become a star again.
From beginning to end, the camera moves along as the audience observes a complicated dream of Riggan. The one long take shooting style displays the line between reality and fantasy that is lost in the characters’ minds.
The film also criticizes the modern world and its obsession with popularity. To illustrate, as Riggan walks through the theater, everyone he encounters is obsessed with the idea of high art versus low art. Riggan, too, is an actor faced with the hierarchy of art.
Trapped in a world where nobody cares how good a piece of artwork is, he is forced to believe that in order to make anything of himself, he needs to fit into the upper echelon of society. Unforunately, he wants to be a respected artist in a place where only two questions are considered essential: “Do critics like it?” and “Does it sell tickets?” Throughout the film, he searches for his purpose in life. He has been conditioned to associate his career with his purpose.
For Riggan, dealing with stress becomes more complex as time goes by. In the first preview of his show, the actor Mike Shiner reacts negatively towards Riggan in front of the audience. After the play, Riggan tells his producer Jake that he does not want to work with Shiner. Once Riggan starts to feel that he is going to lose his control as a director, he gives up. Since he is a person who confuses love for admiration and easily gets affected by negative comments made about him, Riggan heads into a downward spiral.
This depression is reflected in the film's cinematography. Colors are also an important detail to understand Riggan’s psychological mood, much like the circuitous movements of the camera. "Iñárritu [does] not shy away from using strong colors like red, blue and green to enhance the drama of the film”1
When Riggan has a calm talk with his daughter Sam, she shows him a roll of paper that signifies the total number of years of Earth’s existence. Then, she tears a small piece from it to indicate the total number of years human beings have spent on Earth. Out of billions of years, only 150,000. This moment causes Riggan to face reality; He can only choose one of the two ways to perform a successful play: the life of a star with immortality, ego, and self-obsession or the life of a famous mortal actor.
During the play’s opening night, Riggan attempts suicide with a gun in front of the audience. However, he does not die. The beginning of the third act is set in the hospital room where his ex-wife reads the critiques of Riggan’s play and suicide attempt, which critics praising for its "superrealism" and "the unexpected virtue of ignorance." Riggan tells Sylvia and Jake that was what he wanted to achieve.
In the last part of the film, Sam comes into the room. Riggan holds Sam’s hand, and they hug each other warmly. At that moment, Riggan understands what is valuable and truly important to him. Saying farewell to his alter ego suggests that he chose between becoming a star or staying a famous actor. He discovers his purpose in life, which is his family and his connection with his daughter.
In the film’s final shot, the audience sees Riggan reacting to the sound of birds outside his hospital window and then moving out onto the ledge. As the camera moves away, it picks up Sam, and the viewers see the final ending from her perspective. It is not surprising for them to see Sam looking at the sky, because as Prospero says, “Life, then, is merely a vision, and the actors are all spirits that will melt into thin air."2
Riggan’s transformation from a dying star into a shooting star makes sense: his life is also a play, a pageant, an illusion, a delusion. That is why the ignorance of Riggan on the stage of the world gives him an "unexpected virtue."
Works Cited
1. Picone, Jack. 2015. "The Best Cinematography: A Look at Birdman." New York Film Academy. March 30. Accessed March 20, 2018. https://www.nyfa.edu/student-resources/best-cinematography-look-birdman/.
2. Shakespeare, William. 1998. The Tempest. Edited by Laurie Skiba. St. Paul: EMC/Paradigm Publishing.