#16: Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

An oft-overlooked Best Picture winner, Iñárritu’s daring American breakout film is layered with thematic richness, terrific performances, clever metatextual commentary, and a terrific score, all packaged within a brilliant and kinetic technical conceit that enables this film about a play to feel much like a play. Yes, I’ve read (and even partially agree with) all the critiques: it’s too pretentious, its structure is a gimmick, it’s obsessed with being “important,” it’s Hollywood bragging about being Hollywood—I get it. For me, this movie on its face just worked: as an expression of the human spirit, as a darkly humorous entry point into universal questions of meaning and significance, and as a terrific character study. We get great performances from numerous all-timers here! Keaton, Stone, Norton, Watts, even Amy Ryan and Zach Galifianakis clock in good work here. I’ll pushback to the pushback: this film is terrific.

In grad school, I had the privilege of getting to bring Iñárritu work here into dialogue with a study of Ecclesiastes; while a writer always cringes at their past work, I thought it could be a fun time capsule to include the paper in its (near) entirety here. It’s a long read, but perhaps an interesting one, if for no one else but me!

For centuries, poets, philosophers, and the like have identified and articulated an innate human longing for fulfillment. It remains a part of everyday, a conscious or subconscious motivation for how people live, work, and pursue passions; all people attempt to give significance to their life, to see the things that they do provide value and ultimate satisfaction. Yet many find, after projecting expectation of fulfillment onto an item in the world, a void remains in the human heart. This tension of seeking without finding, of attaining but not grasping, is where Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance lives and breathes. The film focuses on the story of actor Riggan Thompson (Michael Keaton), who formerly played a blockbuster superhero named Birdman. Feeling a desire to be a part of something more meaningful than simple popcorn fare, and largely fueled by his longing to become memorable and revered, Riggan has chosen to adapt, direct, and star in his own adaptation of Raymond Carver’s stage play, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” From Riggan’s opening introduction, the audience is simultaneously presented with the voice of Birdman, a private internal narrator of the events of Riggan’s life. This voice addresses Riggan directly, beckoning him to don the cape and wings again, as the recognition and fame he achieved in that role transcended the few hundred people who might attend a showing of his current play. This conflict, largely centered on Riggan’s internal struggle between competing views on fame, significance, and the purpose of his existence, fuels his character in all of his interactions as he and his dysfunctional—albeit talented—cast prepare for their production. Each of these cast members illustrate their own philosophical battles in their relationships with themselves and one another, and any viewer with a cursory knowledge of the movie and theatre industry will certainly appreciate the manner in which these relationships are portrayed. The film at once embraces black humor and high drama, romance and vitriol, the personal and the universal, and it ultimately gives a tangible and relatable depiction of a man’s search for relevance and legitimacy. Naturally such themes can connect to the Christian believer (indeed, to much of humanity), but it is critical to first engage the film on its own terms, evaluating the manner in which it conveys such themes. It is in the unpacking of the movie through Jon Boorstin’s three “eyes” of film—the voyeuristic, vicarious, and visceral—alongside an employment of thematic criticism that reveals the relatedness of Birdman’s ideation with that found in the book of Ecclesiastes, resulting in a constructive framework for engaging the film on a theological level.

The Three V’s: The Voyeuristic, Vicarious, and Visceral

Jon Boorstin, in his book Making Movies Work, provides an effective paradigm for engaging the effectiveness of a film by articulating the three “V’s” of movie experience, namely the voyeuristic, the vicarious, and the visceral. It is in an understanding of Birdman’s effectiveness in these three areas that allows for a more in depth thematic engagement and connection to Ecclesiastes. First, the voyeur’s eye, concerned with the legitimacy and rationality of the sequence of events within a film. Part of appealing to this perspective involves the creation of the world of the film; the filmmaker must establish their realm and then align the story within the rules of that realm. In this regard, Birdman succeeds mightily, largely due to the space and lighting it utilizes. Iñárritu chose to shoot and edit the film as if it was one continuous shot, and thus the entirety of the movie remains within a close location, only once (in a dream-type sequence) straying beyond the theatre of Thompson’s play or the block that surrounds it. This triumphs voyeuristically in two ways: first, it fosters a sense of complete focus on the dark, brooding background of a Broadway production, creating a believable side of show business for the audience to experience; rather than giving a grand and romanticized picture of the industry that varies dramatically in its setting (consider the industry’s depiction in La La Land, for example), it hones in on the innate human struggles of the “movie star” beyond the stage by remaining ever so close to the stage. This is made believable by the space utilized. The lighting assists with this as well: much of the film is shot utilizing only the lights of the stage and backstage, meaning it remains dimly lit through much of its runtime. Thematically speaking, these tools of film create a believable struggle; the audience is not only able to see Riggan’s battle with relevancy and purpose, they are able to experience this via Iñárritu’s cinematography, and in the development of the story furthered by such elements. When he feels the distress of needing to find fulfillment in his success, the constrained darkness of the setting places the audience in the struggle with him, articulating the darkness of his philosophical struggles tangibly. 

This is perhaps most evident in Riggan’s conversation with his daughter, Sam (played by Emma Stone), late one night in the theatre; he enters from the street into a narrow, darkened hallway, and passes a room where Sam sits under only one set of lights in a dark room. Their conversation escalates, to the point where Riggan frustratingly exclaims, “This is my chance to finally do some work that actually means something!” Sam’s response to this concludes in a rant exposing his true motivation in reviving Raymond Carver’s play: “You’re doing this because you’re scared to death, like the rest of us, that you don’t matter. And you know what? You’re right. You don’t. It’s not important, okay? You’re not important.” Sam’s face concludes this rant angrily and aggressively, but without cutting, her face softens as she realizes the impact her words have had on her father; the camera follows her face as she walks out slowly, eventually bringing Riggan’s face into focus. Looking down, he remains utterly defeated by this realization. The lighting and spacing underscore the tension and thematic engagement, and Riggan’s expression indicates a realization that—despite his attempts to bring some sort of transcendent value to his life—he is only one man in a dark and claustrophobic theatre, struggling to find satisfaction amongst a world of humans mired in the same chase. It is here that, perhaps most blatantly, the theme of the fleeting nature of fulfillment in life is expressed; in the midst of a play that is supposed to cement his impact and fulfill his desires for respect and validation, he simultaneously feels distraught and unfulfilled by his aspirations. 

From a vicarious eye, the film does an excellent job, particularly in its treatment of Riggan. In spite of his movie star status, he is highly relatable, representing and embodying the universal human struggle for significance. This is emphasized by a steady dose of close-ups on Riggan; the audience sees his facial expressions in detail regularly throughout the film as he processes his life and work. This allows them to visually see his lack of sleep, to picture his distress about the potentiality of a failure on the stage, to become in touch with the mind that produces Birdman’s voice. Thus the audience gets to feel through him; as Boorstin writes in his description of the vicarious eye, humans have an innate empathic instinct that, when presented with a face, seeks to “divine what the person behind the face is feeling” and “to taste it [the emotion] as our own.” The emphasis on the power of the face is all over the film; consider, for instance, the many reflection shots used throughout. Riggan’s dressing room is where he often goes to escape the mayhem of the performance, and this is where he battles his inner Birdman most blatantly; in his dressing room he is consistently forced to stare at his reflection, as vanity-style mirrors are built in the unavoidable middle of the room. Mirrors also reside in the bar that Riggan visits, and Iñárritu draws attention to such reflections in his camera direction. In this sense, the audience gets numerous technical glimpses into the thematic musings of the main character; the shot composition and placement of reflections throughout the film implicitly draw the audience to Riggan’s constant introspection. These methods of film carry through other characters’ expression of a similar theme, albeit to a lesser extent. Lesley, for example, has similar mirrors in her dressing room, and following Shiner’s attempt to sexually overtake her on stage she remarks, “I finally made it. But I’m still just a little kid.” She has striven much of her life to reach Broadway, and yet now that she has arrived, she realizes that it has not changed who she is at her core, nor has it satisfied her entirely. The usage of relatable development in the characters and their struggles, made technically possible by the precise and intentional camera work, allows the audience to experience through the characters a sense of desperation, of a desire to have something fulfill and the pain of realizing it doesn’t. 

Finally, the visceral eye, concerned with the primitive, immediate experience of the action, romance, or thrill of a film. An aspect of the multifaceted irony of Birdman can be seen in its usage of the visceral; since the film plays with the tension of creating quality art but still being able to entertain, it naturally pokes fun at the visceral thrills that often overwhelm blockbuster films especially. Indeed, this is what Riggan is resisting from his inner Birdman, and yet it remains a constant mental and emotional battle for him. It is, however, the visceral thrills that Riggan chooses to embrace from Birdman in the end; his conversation towards the end of the film, walking down the street and visualizing his flight above the city, focuses on the visceral, albeit in a comedic sense. After reaching his lowest point in the movie, Riggan awakens hungover on the street outside the theatre, and Birdman is the voice that wakes him. Through the entire scene, only Birdman speaks, and Riggan is no longer resisting his voice; instead he begins to embrace the notion that some sort of visceral thrill is his solution to the lack of fulfillment he has felt throughout the movie. Birdman exemplifies this in a vision to him—a missile blows up a nearby car, and a battle between the military and a giant mechanical bird ensues on the building above him—and convinces him that this is what the “people” want. In affirmation, Riggan screeches like a bird, humorously communicating his affirmation of Birdman’s notion. This screech involves an inner recognition of what he now concludes will satisfy him, and thus brings him to the final scene of the film, which simultaneously depicts the final scene of the play. In using a real gun, and actually shooting himself on stage, Riggan chooses to embrace the visceral thrills that Birdman invoked him to. While the viewer rarely gets the visceral thrills of a Hollywood blockbuster, these two final scenes reveal a director aware of the need to appeal to the more primitive, visceral experience of some viewers, and thus thematically brings his character to a visceral climax in reflections on purpose and fulfillment.

Ecclesiastes in Dialogue

In viewing Birdman through voyeuristic, vicarious, and visceral lenses, its quality and its thematic richness become increasingly clear. Riggan Thompson, as the main protagonist, is mired in a perpetual fight for relevancy, to bring to his life significance, and the audience is provided a vivid picture that communicates this desperate fight as a current and historical reality in his life. Indeed, through the voice of Birdman, the viewer is given the notion that even Riggan’s role as a superhero is motivated by finding fulfillment in his work through adoration and praise. Though the “artistry” of a generic superhero role may be lesser, the aim remains the same in both his Birdman pursuits and his Broadway escapade: he is longing to find something of purpose, longing to give himself meaning through his work, accomplishment, fame, or esteem. This remains an intrinsic human struggle, which simultaneously makes it an intrinsic struggle for the Christian; the believer is left reflecting on the answers given in their own life to Riggan’s question of fulfillment, and is forced to evaluate their likeness to his struggle to find life relevant and meaningful. In studying scripture, both believer and nonbeliever alike can find these same questions explored in the ancient book of Ecclesiastes.

Ecclesiastes introduces a character that is separate from the narrator, given the title of “Teacher” or “Preacher” (Qoheleth). It is the ascribed words of this character that give rise to the major thematic developments within the book, and central to his observations is the concept of hevel, translated often as vanity; indeed, his first words in the book read “Vanity, vanity…everything is vanity” (Ecc. 1:2). Perhaps better understood as vapor, as it was often defined within the language, this figurative meaninglessness sets a precedent that unfolds throughout the rest of the Preacher’s observations. For instance, he rhetorically inquires in the first chapter, “What does a man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?” (Ecc. 1:3). He then proceeds, throughout the rest of the chapter, to reiterate the fleeting nature of all that humanity takes up, writing that “all things are full of weariness” (Ecc.1:8a), that the “eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing” (Ecc. 1:8b), that “what has been is what will be…there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecc. 1:9) and that “there is no remembrance of former things” (Ecc. 1:11). These themes—that humanity’s efforts to provide purpose and significance in their lives are negligible, disappearing like a vapor in history and unable to provide satisfaction—then proceed to be unfolded in more specific ways throughout the rest of the book. He mentions the “vapor” of hedonistic pursuits (Ecc. 2:11), the lack of proper justice in the world even amongst those who seek it (Ecc. 3:16-20), the vanity of hard work and of laziness (Ecc. 4:4-6), the emptiness of money in providing fulfillment (Ecc. 5:10-12), and so forth. Life is ultimately an enigma, per the Preacher, and all that man does “under the sun” is simply an effort of “striving after wind.” 

In a similar vein, Riggan Thompson’s journey in Birdman mirrors that of the Preacher in Ecclesiastes: he has gained great monetary wealth in playing a superhero, and yet he finds himself needing to seek something more significant for his fulfillment. Thus the Raymond Carver adaptation is born, with the presumption that it will cement him as a legend of acting and give his life meaning. In spite of his best efforts, however, the movie routinely exposes the inability of the play to provide such fulfillment; Riggan regularly points out the triviality of worldly fame and success, citing that Farrah Fawcett died the same day as Michael Jackson yet did not receive the same publicity, that other prominent actors (he calls them “clowns”) don’t have half his talent yet receive more recognition, and that—in the end—he’s just an “answer to a Trivial Pursuit question,” despite his efforts to give his life lasting meaning. Perhaps the most blatant expression of such triviality is in Riggan’s success in going “viral;” after locking himself out of his own theatre, he is forced to walk through crowded New York streets in his underwear to re-enter through the main entrance. Hundreds of people capture the moment on their phones, and Iñárritu certainly does not miss this critical moment: the music, which is almost entirely the performance of one jazz drummer pacing the drama and action, picks up immensely, as the film shows a marching band playing in the midst of the crowd. Indeed, this is the pinnacle of the film’s expression of hevel, as it depicts Riggan in the midst of the world he so desperately wants to overcome, and he is amongst countless others simply attempting to give their own lives significance. The events of the film force him to continuously come to the same conclusions as the Preacher: that there is not a defined method to giving life lasting meaning, and that the constant pursuit of fulfillment from such things is ultimately chasing after the uncatchable and immaterial. He finally recognizes this while laying in the hospital room following his dramatic self infliction at the end of the film; the “super-realism” of his shooting himself on stage has resulted in critical praise, and the play will be firmly supplanted amongst the greatest Broadway performances. Yet Riggan lays in his hospital bed, as he has lost his nose and by cruel jest is forced to wear a mask to heal, akin to his Birdman role, with a new “beak” surgically added to his face. His manager, Jake, inquires of him, “This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” Reluctantly, with little affirmation in his voice, Riggan responds weakly, “Yes. This is what I wanted.” At this point, despite his most aggressive efforts to seize the “vapor” of life and give himself meaning, Riggan still recognizes its fleetingness. 

Learning To Live: Peace Amidst Hevel

Following the philosophical musings of both Birdman and Ecclesiastes, the works seek to affirm a response of learning to live amidst all of the paradoxical purposelessness. It is here that Riggan and the Preacher confirm the importance of being at peace with personal identity: for Riggan, while not explicitly articulated in the final scene, this peace is implicitly made known by his acceptance of his “true self,” of Birdman, and his choice to live as such. For the Preacher, human identity is intrinsically tied to God, and all people should seek to find enjoyment in their toil and hevel by recognizing their roles as gifts from God, for “apart from Him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?” (Ecc. 2:25). It is in this tension, this innately human and undeniably transcendent friction, that the believer and nonbeliever alike can reside in Birdman, and which is expressed in Ecclesiastes. In doing so, one can learn to respond to the enigma of life. They can learn the tone of their own screech.