However, this is exactly the mental state of the protagonist Riggan (played by Michael Keaton)-whether you agree with this shooting technique or not, it does make the audience feel the protagonist's restlessness. This big star, who was once famous in Hollywood, is now not only dead, but also has almost nothing, no family, no career, no future, even his daughter looks down on him, saying that he is an insignificant person. He was going to do something he had never done before to prove his value, that is, he wrote, directed and acted a stage play, but this was not smooth at all. The first problem is that he has no contacts and money, and he can’t find a good one. Actor, but before the preview started, he still used a chandelier that fell from the sky very willfully to fire the actor who had bad acting skills. Later, he changed to Mike (played by Edward Norton), who was very good at acting, but he was another person he couldn't control, and he also robbed him of the limelight. In this series of unsatisfactory things, the one who hit him the most was the best critic in New York. When he met a drama critic in the bar, he intended to please her, but the other party was honest and innocent and sentenced him to death: This is not Hollywood, and without my approval, you can't be on the Broadway stage.
The film's mockery of Hollywood and Broadway is almost everywhere: outside the play is fake but the real actors are in the play. The critic who decides the life or death of a play without watching the performance but using a few hundred words of commentary... But instead of saying that these are the director's ridicule, I believe that this is the director's creation of an absurd atmosphere for the protagonist's world-and this is the cause of the protagonist's suicide.
The only serious philosophical issue is suicide
The protagonist is also part of this absurdity. He is serious about the stage play almost at all costs, but he has never been paid attention to. However, an unintentional mistake caused him to become the most popular in New York overnight. The topic character (also inadvertently broke the fourth wall in the play, and promoted an innovation in the performance). Of course, the protagonist’s absurdity stems from his inner contradiction. Birdman once brought him fame, but he hates this fame; he hopes to prove his worth with a stage play, but he also longs for others’ approval. The irony is that when he decided to commit suicide on stage to say goodbye to the bad state of the past, he even failed to commit suicide. After waking up, he found that the world was still absurd, and the bandages on his face made him look like What he looked like when he played Birdman-the image he always wanted to get rid of. The manager thought that his suicide was just an eye-catching gimmick and praised him greatly. This misunderstanding may be a great insult to him; and the one who originally looked down on him and wanted to "kill" him with a pen The critics, however, were impressed by his "suicide" and praised his stage play, saying that his suicide was a pioneering work in performance. But that shot is not a performance for the protagonist, because in fact even that stage play is a true portrayal of his life. The line of the stage play before his suicide is exactly his inner struggle: why I keep begging for love ? Even I am acting as someone else all the time?
This line repeated many times in the movie is more than just the protagonist’s life dilemma. Many people say that the protagonist’s inner entanglement and unsatisfactory life are manifestations of a middle-aged crisis, but I think the problems encountered by the protagonist have nothing to do with age, because anyone who knows how to think may ask the same question. "What is the purpose of survival? Is there any meaning in life?" In many cases, self-lost is not because of the disappearance of "I", but because "I" is too big to keep asking for others' approval. In this process, we inadvertently moved away from the true self. At the beginning of the film, two lines of poem were quoted:
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.
This poem was written by Raymond Carver, the author of "When We Discuss Love, What Are Actually Discussing" in his later years and was carved on his tombstone after his death. Delinquency
is the only way out
. Did Riggan get what he wanted? The movie is really not very clear. If it was his original purpose for stage play, then he got applause. However, just like the flower that his daughter gave him last, he used to insist on getting that kind of flower, but when he got it, he was shot in the nose, but he could no longer smell the fragrance of the flower. The obsession with "scent of flowers" was precisely the reason why he could not get rid of the demons in the past, but when he lost his sense of smell, his life was sublimated.
The movie ends in an open end, we don't know if Riggan jumped off or what happened. But I don't want to guess his whereabouts. I thought of Yu Guangzhong's poem "Looking for Li Bai": "Disappearance is the only end of a genius." This sentence can be used on Riggan with a simple change: missing is his only way out. His "disappearance" is for our audience, because we can't see him; but for him, he has never been so clear about where he is-from the ambiguous smile of his daughter , You can see his freedom after his new life. The so-called disappearance is an attitude of drawing a line from the world and returning to the depths of my heart.
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