i haven't watched a movie in so long. let me sit with this. so. Birdman. this movie was literally everywhere when i first came into the film community. and lookie now, i've seen it. to be fair i watched the first 25 or so minutes of this movie more than a month ago, but my attention span wasn't cooperating with me so i shelved it for a better occassion. which happened to be 1am on a saturday in july. this movie just taps into your insecurities as an artist, doesn't it? and riggan, man, he's self-centred, apologetic but can't get past the tunnel vision of his ambitions enough to give more than two fucks about anyone else, and it's so real? i mean, self-report here but i kinda saw myself in him. like your potential is being wasted, like you were meant for better but will always have to live with this label that people can't get past, how everything you've ever wanted will never be in your grasp and everything you have will never be enough. it's so interesting how riggan thinks he's a has-been that no one knows or cares about when it becomes obvious through the background how widely beloved he is, that people CARE about him yk, but that, that just doesn't register in his head long enough for him to assign value to that love, because sylvia is right: he mistakes love for admiration, but since he doesn't register this admiration he's garnered, he doesn't register the love either. i'm talking nonsense. i thought sam was weird for getting in the whatever-that-was with mike, but it also felt like she was just lonely and tried looking for connection elsewhere, and mike didn't freak out about her potential suicidal behaviour sitting on that ledge and instead made light of it. so. yeah. that was the only place where mike was ALMOST decent enough for complexity. he literally sexually assaulted leslie on stage, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PLAY. so fuck him. hope he vanished into obscurity and became the greatest has-been there ever was. fkin prick thinking he's a prodigy and shit when the only place he acts like a human is in the characters he plays. he literally steals riggan's personal life info and passes it off as his own in the interview. riggan had a valid asf crashout about that. also i KNEW there'd be a real gun eventually with the end of the play hehe predictable, but i did not think riggan would try to attempt suicide, and survive, and attempt again? i did not fully understand the ending of the movie. did riggan give his ambitions up? or did he achieve it and felt like he did not have much to live for anyways? were the birdman powers real? what is sam's reaction supposed to mean? riggan is always haunted by this voice in his head, green goblin-style, and it silences itself when riggan tries to kill himself. maybe the voice is self-deprecation yk, coz riggan gets angry and suicidal when he listens to it. it spews bullshit in his head about how this stint as a "serious" actor is bullshit and he should've stuck with his Birdman glory days fame instead of vying for something better. it's his self-doubt personified. and by the end of the movie, he says "fuck you" to that persona, saying fuck you to his self-doubt. but why does he jump? and why does sam look up, in awe at that? because he's in a better place? does it signify he's ascended after death? what about the police chatter in the credits and the noises of the crowd, implying he really did jump out the window to his death. man. this was a stressful watch at times haha. i think i paused at three different places to prepare myself for something embarrassing. but, great movie. i LOVED the jazz score. it adds so much dynamic tension in the experience of the movie and controls the pace so well. it's wonderful. i did not even mention how the entire movie works on a one-take format. obv there's transition cuts in between but it must've been a tall damn order to shoot this movie. kudos to the cast and crew.
