Among the shortlisted works for Oscar's best feature film in recent years, the eight-legged essays with special tastes of the academy are in power, as if they use bitter performances, make-up aimed at disfigurement, and outdated scripts that match the average age of the judges. , you can contract the depth of history and human nature.
Among the films selected this year, Mexican director Inarido's "Birdman" is an anomaly. Hollywood star Ronald Reagan, who once played the comic book character "Birdman", has been forgotten. In order to prove himself, he directed and acted, and put Raymond Carver's novel "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" to the Broadway stage.
From the "Bird Man" series of films, to Carver's novels, to plays, the layers of texts in the movies are all fictional, but they are not false. The reality on the screen does not depend on something "adapted from real events".
A crew in constant condition, in the process of launching a new work, the artistic creation and the troubles of personal life are mixed together, and the situation is getting out of control; it seems to be doing its best to laugh at itself, and secretly protect the dignity of the actor. Such a story is reminiscent of previous works such as "Ai Huo Chuan" (1994) and "Bullets Over Broadway" (1994). And "Birdman" is well-known for its pseudo-one shot to the end, so that the camera has been chasing the group of people walking, encountering, arguing, and conflicting in the narrow aisles and rooms in the background, accompanied by low drum beats along the way, creating a kind of chaos and chaos. A sense of cramped psychological pressure.
In films that make fun of "things in the circle", sometimes I like to choose people who match the character's setting and resume as much as possible. In this way, the narrative of the film extends ambiguously from the creative process and the work to the real level. The most classic example should be "Sunset Boulevard" (1950). The heroine asked the old butler to put her in the silent film. In fact, the old butler was the director who first discovered her, and she was also her first husband; who would have thought that in reality, the two actors also fell in love, and it was his director who made her in the film. The glory of the silent film era, and even more so, the film that was released was the "Waterloo" that made these two slumped in film history.
The crew of "Birdman" also found the shadows of several actors. "Birdman" Michael Keaton was the original Batman of the previous generation before Nolan and Bell cooperated; Naomi Watts, the heroine on stage, seemed to be back in "Mulholland Drive", still the unconfident one Dream Chaser; and Edward Norton himself, like his character Shannon, is a self-proclaimed successor of the "Method School", and his artistic pursuit is so high that it is difficult to get along with. In order to impress the audience, he did not hesitate to fight his own way. It was also Reagan's last blockbuster stunt on the stage. During the first rehearsal, Shannon said that the prop gun Reagan used to commit suicide on stage was ridiculous. Reagan shot himself with a real gun.
Why are they working so hard? Carver, quoted in the opening credits, has a hint. "What I want in this life" is to "be loved and feel loved on earth" (from "Belated Fragments").
Reagan's adaptation of "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" is about two couples chatting on the topic of "love" after a meal. The love they talk about is basically love in a narrow sense, which is to love a woman and love it. Suicide, it's the heartbreak of an old man who is in a car accident when he can't see his wife.
And Birdman talks about being loved "on Earth." To Xiaoli, it is the artists who desperately want the public to love themselves in order to survive. This is a business where the two labels of "full pot" and "precariousness" can be affixed to the same person and the same company. How many movies about movies are about how fast and how ruthless this industry is, which suddenly fell from the clouds to the center of the earth. Speaking of which, who is not imprisoned in the world's evaluation of themselves and themselves?
As for Reagan, he not only longed for recognition, but also for people to love themselves as artists. And in the eyes of the drama critic who can kill or die on Broadway, he and the group of people he represents are just selfish, spoiled children, not to mention artists, actors are not even "celebrities"." Optimists without formal training trying to create real art".
Drama critics say she hates him, and tomorrow she will destroy the new drama he has poured all his heart into with the pen in her hand. Before the climax, the drama often has the lowest trough of the whole play, a moment when the protagonist falls from "nothing" to "the dark night of the soul". If it is a real superhero movie, it must be invincible by the villain. flattened. And "Birdman" is here, in an unremarkable New York bar. The early judgment of the drama critics, for Reagan, means "nothing."
And the title of the film, if there is one, is often seen in the "Dark Night of the Soul". After Reagan and the critics had a face-to-face quarrel, he was walking on the streets of New York, and the famous monologue before Macbeth's deadline was heard outside the camera: "Go out, go out, short candlelight! Life is just a walk. The shadow of the sage, a clumsy actor who gestures on the stage, comes on stage for a moment, and then quietly retires in silence; it is a story told by a fool, full of noise and commotion, but can not find any meaning ." The
camera turned to the person who read Bai, who was just an inexplicable passerby. In order to attract Reagan's attention, passers-by made a ridiculous hoarse voice, but Reagan was indifferent. The superposition of their attitudes had an alienating effect, carefully concealing the true meaning here. This quotation predates the agitation of "Bird Man" and has already prompted the protagonist's subsequent question mark death.
Despite the motto on Reagan's mirror: "What is is what it is, not what people say it is." However, on stage he roars, "Why do I always beg people to love me?", "I just want to Be what you want to be", "Now every minute I pray to be someone else". This is the Eddie who committed suicide for love. Reagan's adaptation visualized Eddie, whom the four talked about, and arranged it as the final highlight on the stage. Each of our favorite stories will never be unfamiliar to you, because it can only be our own. Eddie touched him. This character roars out, but also the protagonist's emotional entanglement.
In contrast, the daughter who came out of the drug rehab center was always fiddling with a long tissue. Later, she explained to her father that in the drug rehab center, they taught her to draw dots on a tissue, each dot representing 100 years, and it can be seen intuitively that human beings are only a drop in the ocean compared to the earth, "I think this reminds me the value of our ambitions.”
Psychological problems are often caused by problems with the self-evaluation system. The masked Birdman was always with Reagan, coming out to chatter when he was frustrated. After coming down the assembly line of Hollywood type films, the stereotypes follow him, even if the scenery is gone, even if he walks naked on the street, some people call Reagan "Birdman". In this way, Reagan has an alternate self-an identity that cannot be shaken off by an external evaluation system set on him.
After critics dragged Reagan into rock bottom, the "Birdman" vision resurfaced. Although Reagan once dismissed the now-popular Iron Man, when the artist's path seemed to be over, "Bird Man" won Reagan's full approval. Taking the words of "Bird Man", he admitted that his fantasy was that he could have plastic surgery at the age of 60 to become 30 years old, and come to a movie with a box office of 1 billion US dollars. What the audience likes is the explosions, it's the action scenes, and he's just going to give them that, and then he can be above everyone. Because the previous lines said, this is an era of "culture spread by gods and myths, which has been OEMed by washing machine detergent advertisements and cartoon characters". In other words, superheroes are the new gods.
In this section, the special effects show the colorful chapter of "Bird Man" coming to the sky over New York. At the end of the hero's long declaration of legitimacy, he encouraged Reagan to stage the hot ending of "Flame, Sacrifice, Icarus" - This Greek mythological figure took off with wings made of wax and feathers. Because he flew too high, the wax melted and he fell into the water and died. On the day of the show, as Ed, Reagan said the "I don't exist" and "I'm not even here" lines again, and this time he was really talking about himself. So he set out to disappear on his own.
However, he just blew his nose off. But this ultra-small-scale action scene has attracted a lot of attention for him on social networks that he has always rejected, and drama critics have changed their tune, praising his play for the "accidental virtue of ignorance." Is this small victory his own victory or that of "Bird Man"? Is it the victory of the persistent pursuit of art, or the victory of those new gods? Does "The Sound and the Fury" of foolishness make sense? The movie doesn't give an answer. Reagan's bandaged face looked like another mask. He loosened the bandages to reveal a face that didn't look like his own after the nose change, then stood on the edge of the window and disappeared.
The disappeared "Birdman", like "The Lost Lover", is a special product of our time. It is in this sense that Nietzsche hated Wagner thoroughly and hated him for making all artistic elements the servants of drama. More than 150 years ago, he sensed that in this coming age, "great achievements, sensational success, are no longer a matter of sincere people - to be successful, people must be actors!" Lovers disappeared, The perfect woman's perfect family is forever alive in the hearts of TV viewers, Reagan is gone, and the descendants of "Birds" will continue to rule the sky above Manhattan.
Extend from the movie back to reality. "Birdman" was well-received, and most ironically, a friend joked that Michael Keaton's brightest future would be to play a villain in Manwy's film series, even if he could make a comeback with this film.
February 4, 2015
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