0:04 : A lady asks Riggan, "Is this for real or are you shooting a film?" Riggan replies, "A film", to which the lady replies, "You people are full of shit." I would say this is the dose of pessimism and negativity that is peppered into the entire movie to represent the doubt of any artistic endeavor. Never good enough, critics lurking everywhere. Riggan fears that he's full of shit.
I think it's interesting that the only people who goes out of their way to compliment Riggan for his endeavors are Norton (a crazy artist) and his best friend the producer.
Besides that, he gets constantly derided. The woman on the rooftop. The black guy screaming "you suck" when he's in his underwear. His daughter. The theater critic.
Maybe only Norton really understand what Riggan is going for?
2:42 : BONUS - At 2:42 you can see a pedestrian pull something off Riggan's back, probably his wire from flying.
lol, good catch.
Right but its not just a delusional moment. Sam is there holding his hand and hugging him. The transformation, at least in the sense of his relationship with his daughter, does in fact seem to be transformed.
Sam might just be part of his delusions though, not the real Sam, but his imagination. Especially since she sees him flying at the end.
As for the ending, I agree it was too ambiguous to be sure. It was the weakest moment in the film I thought. Just kind of a worthless addition, imo.
Yeah. It really does obfuscates a lot of themes.
The shooting suicide attempt and the aftermath I'd say poking fun at media and public obsession with personal drama over art.
Isn't that sort of embedded in the whole film though? Throughout the narrative, we don't really get any good inspection as to why the theater or this play has so much to say about the art or the human condition. The focus is pretty centered on the inter-personal clashes that are happening during its production. So in a way, the movie itself is more interested in drama over art. Unless the message is that going through these inter-personal clashes is the art in-and-of-itself, I suppose.
Which leads me to think the end does not actually happen. Riggon dies on stage and everything that happens afterwards is during his dying moments. He believes he has accomplished greatness, he fantasizes about his daughter's love, he jumps out the window and flies and she smiles at him flying away. It is the only scene with another main character where that character buys into the MR presented on screen.
Tufts parlance = Magical Realism
europe1's parlance = Look they're doing the Taxi Driver-ending mcTingy!!?
I find it ironic that in a film full of MR, he is praised for achieving Super Realism from his act of shooting himself in the head. When Tabitha walks out, we see the first clear cut in the movie. Is it because he is dead? The entire movie was fluid, this cut feels like a change in reality.
Nice catch!
- The fact that he received a great review, even though we see Tabitha walk out without clapping. There is no indication she liked the play. this happens around :50 seconds.
Hmm... considering she sitts dead-still for several seconds as the audience is thundering in applause... to me it seems like she's more shocked than anything. Possibly so affected that she doesn't know how to react and chagrined that she came-in with the intentions of hating this play.
I found this to be especially heart breaking because she got him the part and he was cavalier, disrespectful and hateful towards her as a person and towards her dreams. Several times she said that being on Broadway was her dream, and to please not ruin it, and he showed complete disregard towards her as a human, as his partner and as a colleague. Even Jake was inappropriate when he kissed Naomi on the lips after she got Norton to take the role.
I think there is this theme going of Norton not being able to empathize or relate to anything that isn't related to a performance. His erectile dysfunction is part of it, he can only get it up while playing a part, not as himself, he's simply to disconnected from himself to do that. His relationship with Sam changes that. It is sort of weird that he's derisive towards Naomi's artistic ambitions, while he's almost the only one who compliments Riggans. Could he percieve Naomi Watts line about "I finally made it to broadway" as merely attention-seeking, her trying to become a celebrity?
And yeah, he's a douche.
Another little Easter egg I noticed was that when the club watched Mulholland Drive
I was thinking that more when Naomi Watts and Annie were staring into the mirror. You had the mirror and homosexual motif going.
I think we can see from the way RIggan behaves he's not suffering from some extreme form of hallucinatory mental illness, rather these images are a visualisation of his mental state.
Well... Riggan himself believes that he is witnessing these hallucinations and possesses these powers. After the lighting-equipment fell on the actors head, he took the producer aside and told him that he caused the accident to happen with the power of his mind. That, to me, seems to indicate that he's actually having visions rather than them merely being visualisation of his mental state.
Rewatching it yesterday it did strike me that the flying scene in Birdman is rather like the out of body exspereince in Rumblefish....
