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stringnarratives · 5 years

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The Unexpected Virtue of Losing Touch With Reality: “Birdman”

[I wrote the below essay on “Birdman, or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance” just after its wider theatrical release in 2014, two weeks before the film was awarded Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Written for an art criticism class, it’s ironically less academic than most of the articles I post to the blog -- a little less analysis and a little more review -- but I still find myself going back to read it around Oscar’s season, and thought I’d share it this evening. Spoilers ahead for this and a handful of other films. Enjoy.]

I was under the impression that Alejandro González Iñárritu’s newest film, Birdman, or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance starring Michael Keaton, Emma Stone, and Ed Norton, was a “dramady,” an amusing-enough film with a fair amount of emotional impact. A feel-good film, perhaps. A little off-beat, but nothing too deep or too sinister to be categorized as anything that I would think about longer than until the end of the night.

Fortunately, I was very wrong.

The dramatic film, which has been nominated for nine Academy Awards this year, focuses on washed up action film superstar Riggan Thomson as he struggles to direct a successful Broadway play, breathe life back into his acting career, rekindle a relationship with his formerly drug-addicted daughter, and reconcile a past that has left him a legend with a future that has found him a virtual nobody. Taunted constantly and sometimes violently by his own alter ego— the titular superhero he once played on-screen and who he still, in his mind, could be— he bumbles through each challenge with a strange brand of dignity, a craving for acceptance but a stubbornness that dictates that he must have it on his own terms.

Birdman and reality have a strange and sometimes uncomfortable relationship in the same way Fight Club did, in the same way the Matrix did, and—in some aspects— the same way that Inception did. It’s a heavy film, but one so interspersed with the “meta,” the subconscious thoughts of a man who we as viewers really only follow through the film, that the heaviness takes on the swirling lights of lunacy almost as much as the sharp clarity of some painful reality. We are left wondering what is real, what is only in Riggan’s mind. Overall, we can not be entirely sure what will happen to Riggan Thomson, nor what has happened to him in the past. We can only live in the quickly-moving present.

The artistry behind pulling us into this shadowy and fluid world is brilliantly calculated, taking our world and placing it in the fictional, reflecting it back at us in a way that is strange and distorted, though familiar. Most of—if not all of— the music in the movie is strategically diegetic, and occasionally the camera pans over to show a street performer, to give us context to the world in which we have been placed. Throughout Birdman, we are reminded, in purposeful irony, of the world of the real-life action stars, the blockbuster screens where capes and explosive special effects still dazzle audiences, including, maybe even ourselves.

And then we are reminded that this is not one of those movies, but perhaps the unmade sequel, “the fourth movie” referenced several times during the film. This is the story of what happens after Captain America or Batman or Spiderman ends. This is the story of a man who was once a hero, is remembered as a hero, but who is no longer, who is catapulted back onto the artistic scene after years in the shadows.

That man is as much Michael Keaton (the artist formerly known as Batman) as it is Riggan Thomson.

Whether it was some sort of self-fulfilled prophecy, an uncanny self-awareness, or an abundance of confidence on behalf of both Michael Keaton and the team behind the film, we cannot say for sure, though other casting decisions may persuade us to say that it was no mistake. Who else, for example, knows more about a movie about yielding to the advice of a violent alter ego than Edward Norton, the star of the 1999 film Fight Club? And Emma Stone, fresh from the most recent Amazing Spiderman franchise due to her character’s death, surely knows something about getting the boot from the action film industry.

The filming of the movie is reminiscent of that in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film Rope, a seamlessly edited string of shots that gives the impression that the whole thing was filmed in one long take. This in particular lends to the whole film a feeling of stage-production, of watching a play, with actors coming on and off stage, the action typically focusing on whatever character has the most dialogue at the time. With it comes a level of dramatic irony not usually present within film: in one particular scene, Stone’s character Sam Thomson is just off-screen, hiding in the dressing room while another character degrades her her to Norton’s Mike Shiner. We are present for an odd little subplot in which two of the actresses in Riggan’s show discuss him and then make out backstage. That kind of detail, even in the strange little diversions, gives the audience a certain presence in the movie.

The typical three-shot shooting process is also, for the most part, absent from the fabric of the film; we are not presented only with a person, a thing, and the person’s reaction to the thing. Rather, we are left several times to focus on one character’s reaction to whatever is happening outside of our view. For example, after an explosive argument between Sam and Riggan, the camera lingers on Sam’s face instead of cutting to Riggan’s, watching her expression fall from tension and anger to something very near regret. The strategy works poignantly in the study of character in the film and even goes so far as to contribute to the very symbolic— though highly ambiguous— ending.

The characters themselves serve an important role (no pun intended) in making the film the artistic statement that it is. Their emotions, the fluid way that the actors interact with the camera, make them seem a part of our reality in an almost high definition way. Emma Stone’s pale, fragile-looking physique, her wide, wild eyes and her withdrawn, timid demeanor make her role as a recovering addict believable. Michael Keaton’s tiredness, his very real connection with his character, add to the Riggan Thomson that the audience sees on screen. Even Edward Norton’s theatrical range, his capacity to be both amusing and, at times, frightening in his intensity, works for the betterment of Birdman. But at the same time, even the characters are both very literally and figuratively acting, feigning happiness or health, playing for an audience of their peers and those they wish to impress.

Keaton’s character obviously suffers from some breed of depression; schizophrenia, in some interpretations of his very talkative alter ego, may not even be a far-off diagnosis. Stone’s character continues to have issues with addiction and dealing with a broken family. Norton is addicted to grandeur, but is unable to function when he is not onstage or preparing to be on stage. They are all only striving to achieve the flimsy appearance of normality, all of them fighting the nagging concept of their own “Birdman,” their pasts and the consequences that have resulted from the decisions they have made.

For all of these things, though, for better or for worse, there was no battle scene. The bad guy was never slayed; there was no bad guy to slay. There was no enormous and cathartic climax for the viewer to rely on, only a single tense event that leads us further down the rabbit hole in the two-hour-long game of real-or-not-real. Which, in true form to its being poised as the anti-hero movie, the film may have benefitted from in some literary way. While it progressed fine without the hero moment, the movie had a subtly intense plot that may leave the viewer feeling stressed and unfulfilled, especially since this plot ended fairly vaguely. Leaving the theater, one might not know what to think, may be overwhelmed by the little knots of tension that dotted the film.

But, at least, you leave the theater feeling something.

From start to finish, Birdman is a film filled with distorted reflections of our own reality, our world seen from a funhouse mirror. While it may not be the cup of tea of those looking for a thrill ride, for an action film, for something more than, simply, a weird study of humanity and the theater, it was a film that can be commended for its daring technical aspects and its attempts to reach out towards a deeper meaning. Keaton, Stone, and Norton made the film a success, and it is likely that they will reap the rewards of their hard work during the upcoming awards season. But, in the end, it is the work of a whole team to produce a film such as this, with detailed artistry, unorthodox approaches to modern philosophy and just overall cleverness giving Birdman, or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance its wings.

#Film #Birdman #Movies #titles

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topmixtrends · 6 years

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IN HIS FASCINATING linked novellas The Garbage Times and White Ibis, Sam Pink exposes the absurdity hidden just below the surface of everyday life. In The Garbage Times, this takes the form of a deep dive into society’s underbelly to reveal the grime most people turn away from when walking down the street: homeless people defecating, rats scurrying, pigeons eating dirty food, drug addicts having illogical conversations. It is all there, and Pink won’t allow the reader to ignore it.

The Garbage Times is an homage to the randomness of life, the inevitability of shit, scum, and death, and the beauty that glimmers amid the filth. The story’s unnamed narrator is a man who deals with all manner of absurd behavior as he loads garbage, plunges toilets and sinks, and works as a bouncer at a bar. Despite the character’s peculiarities, readers will likely find his barrage of thoughts, explosive emotions, fantasies of violence, and bursts of tenderness easy to relate to. Most of us, Pink implies, are more like this “crazy” garbage man than we would like to admit as we “plunge” our way through life trying to get rid of the shit — pun intended.

The narrator is diligent in his job. Surrounded by rats and pigeons, he takes on each clog with vigor and an absence of fear or disgust, and this endless drive to clean up the messes of others — shit seems to be everywhere — takes on a hilarious cast. Throughout, Pink’s profanity-laced prose feels fitting, as it places the reader deep in the minds of characters choking on the so-called civilized world’s muck.

In counterbalance to the crassness and moments of violence that punctuate The Garbage Times, Pink’s narrator shows a deep, humanizing love and respect for women and animals. For example, when he returns home to his cat Rontel, one of his main companions, he thinks,

Inside my apartment, Rontel was lying on the stove — his eyes half closed, wagging his tail.

He went to meow but didn’t make a sound.

He stretched, knocking a metal burner off the stove.

“Come here, my little shithead,” I said.

I picked him up and kissed his head four times real quick.

In a really deep and gravelly voice, I said, “Rontel, you a handsome baby!”

He was blinking a lot and licking his snoot, staring up at the ceiling.

Sun lit my room.

Pink’s fascination with animals continues in White Ibis, in which there is a sad, profound moment where the narrator sympathizes with a lizard trying to defend itself against the housecat Dotty, who is slowly killing it by batting it around:

This lizard was for real.

It looked up at her, gill things puffed out, like “All right, all right yeah, big tough guy, let’s have it. [wipes nose] You wanna pick on someone? Yeah ok, all right, pick on me, tough guy, go ahead and — ” but Dotty just mangled it some more.

She left it broken and mostly dead, on its back, barely breathing.

Since the lizard is suffering, the narrator’s girlfriend pressures him to kill it, and he does:

I smashed the lizard’s head with the heel of my boot. Its guts came out its side. Fuck. You tried. You tried. I get it. Sometimes you just gotta pick a place and say, “Right here. Here’s where it happens. Right here.” Gills out, boss, gills out. R.I.P.

The power, humor, sadness, and tenderness in Pink’s writing is haunting when he is at his best, as in this observation of a turtle at a laundromat aquarium in The Garbage Times:

Short bookcases with aquariums on them — turtles swimming in shallow water.

I watched this one turtle trying to swim through the aquarium wall as I dumped a garbage bag of my clothing into a washer.

The turtle made the same sideways swimming motion with both arms.

The same tap of the head against the glass.

Same tiny wave of water bouncing off the glass and coming backwards.

Each time.

Fucking shit.

This is the beauty of Pink’s work — he shows the simple devastations of containment, of beings (in this case animals) living without dignity but still striving toward hope, over and over again, as we all do, wanting things to come out all right. This is the heart of his message, the essence of his book: we will never stop trying to keep moving no matter how confined we are. No matter how random life is, we press on toward something intangible in the distance with only the will to live fueling us.

In this quest for life and dignity is an equally powerful desire to succumb to death. Its inevitability curls underneath each page, hides in each scene. Morbid readers will really dig this book. As will lovers of the absurd, though the magic of Pink is that he turns the absurd to a purpose. The novellas are hilarious and unabashedly honest in showing how bizarre life is, how unpredictable people are, and yet how each person craves love, dignity, freedom — the fundamental needs we all share. In its surreality and sadness, The Garbage Times leaves readers with an impression of characters living in the grime of the world, amid constant violence and despair, yet striving to rise above and make sense of it all.

Pink is a master of dialogue. He nails slang and the odd way people often misuse or mispronounce words, particularly folks who have been traumatized in some way or just talk funny. For example, in The Garbage Times, the narrator frequents a bar where he has a strange affection for the female bartender, who has a bizarre accent that he imitates good-naturedly:

“Stahhp! Quit maykin me laugh! Oh hey, watch [Regular] over dair. He’s doing the hair ting.”

[Regular] was a Vietnam vet who came in every day

[…]

he was whipping his long hair around, and hiking his pants over his huge belly, sitting at the corner of the bar with a group of people behind him.

His face was totally red and he was talking to himself.

The look on his face was so evil.

I laughed.

The novellas, as eccentric as they are, are grounded in scenes with a powerful sense of authority. And some of Pink’s lines are pure gold, encapsulating some universal truth or humorous insight, or both: “And all the animals headed back to their corners, to wait for tomorrow. Hiding from the things with real teeth and power.”

At the same time, Pink can get carried away. There are moments of overindulgence and repetition where the narrator will pick up a thought and run with it too long. But Pink’s audacity in taking risks is admirable. His style is purposefully messy — he is having fun writing and playing with how obsessive the brain can be. He thrills in breaking convention.

The conversational tone only adds to the humor of these novellas. Despite its odd formatting, the book becomes very readable once the reader adapts to its strange, galloping style. Pink takes the reader on an adventure, and there is a mysterious momentum at work in the voice-driven narrative, a Murakami-like invisible hand that guides these characters with a purpose to press on and preserve dignity, preserve authenticity, through a seemingly sordid, artificial world.

In White Ibis, the unnamed narrator admires the strange, titular bird that walks to and fro at the end of his driveway in Florida, the way it shoots judgmental glances and avoids direct contact with anyone or anything. It serves as a symbol for the narrator’s desire to be free of domestication, of playing along, but he’s torn because he wants to keep his girlfriend and maintain some sense of normalcy. So, while he struggles to get a job, attends parties, and carries on normal conversations, the pull of the white ibis strutting around and doing its own thing perpetually calls to him. When he sees it, he thinks, “I really wanted the white ibis to like me and to be my friend. And to its credit, it — seemingly — did not. Ok. Well. Hell, I understood.”

In pondering the nature of the ibis and all creatures that fight for survival, he articulates the theme that links the two novellas beautifully:

The peacock and other weird non-bad-ass birds like the white ibis seemed hilarious, given evolution.

I imagined all creatures at the beginning of time, right before it all begins, in private, devising their offenses/defenses and then coming out into an open field and revealing them.

Into the field of existence with means to survive.

Like hey, check this out, got a big horn on my face!

In the hands of a lesser writer, the narrator would rebel against being in a relationship and the story would implode with bickering. Instead, the young couple in White Ibis seems genuinely happy and in sync with one another, and she accepts his social anxiety as his to deal with.

White Ibis ends on a tender note. A Girl Scout troop holds a sleepover at the couple’s home, and while the narrator at first resists he ultimately enjoys the girls and their exuberance. He empathizes with their fears about being ugly as he is pressured into drawing their portraits (he is known as “the artist”), and as a result finds unexpected meaning and beauty in connection with other alienated humans.

Reading Sam Pink is an unpredictable experience. He hits varied tones and moods, and readers never know where he is taking them next. He’s been labeled “experimental,” but these novellas are just good fiction. He sucks readers in and makes them see the world as his narrators do. His stories are unique and true and impossible to put down — what more could anyone want?

Taylor Larsen is the author of the novel Stranger, Father, Beloved (Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster, 2016). She teaches fiction writing for Catapult and the Sackett Street Writers Workshop and is co-editor of the literary website The Negatives.

The post The Things with Real Teeth and Power: Two Novellas from Sam Pink appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/2HIzASl

#Los Angeles Review of Books #topmixtrends

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njawaidofficial · 7 years

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'Veep' Season 7: Selina Meyer's Memoir, Jonah Ryan for President

New Post has been published on http://styleveryday.com/2017/06/29/veep-season-7-selina-meyers-memoir-jonah-ryan-for-president/

'Veep' Season 7: Selina Meyer's Memoir, Jonah Ryan for President

The Veep Easter eggs keep on giving.

The HBO political comedy aired its finale on Sunday, but a handful of the biggest developments to come out of season six are continuing to play out off-screen, thanks to a trifecta of living and breathing websites.

After catapulting Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) into uncharted territory to track her journey as an ex-president, Selina’s journey this season included publishing a memoir, and nearly breaking ground on her presidential library, before deciding to run for president again in the finale. The final episode also revealed another candidate who will be taking her on: Jonah Ryan (Timothy Simons).

Below, The Hollywood Reporter takes a look at what three Veep websites reveal ahead of the show’s season seven return next year.

Selina Meyer

After launching a site for Selina Meyer’s fund at the beginning of the season, the minds behind Veep have been updating the site as the fund’s purpose morphed throughout the season. Its original name, The Meyer Fund for Adult Literacy, quickly expanded as Selina tacked on causes. The fund, which is run by her daughter-in-law Marjorie (Clea Duvall) is now titled: The Meyer Fund for Adult Literacy, AIDS, The Advancement of Global Democracy, Military Family Assistance & Child Obesity.

In addition to bios, an online literacy test and “press” clips taken from episodes, the fund’s site has now added an excerpt from Selina’s long-awaited memoir, which was penned by ghostwriter Mike McLintock (Matt Walsh).

The memoir, titled A Woman First: First Woman — “pun intended,” as Mike proclaimed — boasts the tagline: “A leader for a year. A female for a lifetime.” Available for viewing are the front and back covers, the former which features the blurry photo of Selina shown during the season. The chosen excerpt is of the book’s introduction.

In the three-page preface, Selina writes that she remembers the first day she entered the White House as POTUS well, as it was the birthday of singer Celine Dion and former MLB player Jose Canseco, on Feb. 6, 2016 [Veep‘s current timeline actually takes place in the future to maintain accuracy]. Mike’s influence is seen early in the second paragraph, which provides the weather forecast of the day in unnecessary detail.

She goes on to mention the hardships of her upbringing in Centreville, Maryland — where her childhood nickname was “Smellina” and how the lack of public transportation brought an undesirable “element” to her all-American hometown, which had everything from bankers and doctors to businessmen and “small businessmen” — and she revealed her three life rules.

The Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Then another rule, “Decide what you want from others so that you may give it back to them in accordance with the Golden Rule.”

And finally, a third famous rule that is a bit less Golden but “more realistic”: “Let them hate you, as long as they fear you.”

In the White House, Selina says she quickly noted the male portraits on the walls who seemed to be telling her, “Go back to where you belong in the vice-president’s office! A woman can’t be president!” But she thought of all the women who came before, of all her own struggles and of the people in her life, including her family and staff, who “through opposition, subtle undermining, or sheer incompetence had attempted to thwart me.”

So she took a deep breath and told herself, “You’re on your own Selina Meyer.” She then unnecessarily details the hallways she walked before finally arriving at the Oval.

“I was ready,” she concludes. (Read the full excerpt here.)

Once again, Selina is on her own as the finale also saw her breaking up with the one man with whom she finally found happiness — a heartbreaking ending, according to showrunner David Mandel. Now, she is headed to the early days of the campaign trail, and so is Jonah. But just because each of them desires to run for president, doesn’t mean they will.

“I will remind the audience that four years ago, Mitt Romney wanted to run for president and people didn’t exactly want him running again,” Mandel told THR. “Just because she wants to run for president doesn’t necessarily mean anything else.”

Jonah Ryan

As for Jonah’s chances, Mandel also said, “I’m sure there a lot of people running.” Jonah does, however, also have a fresh website supporting his bid.

His website, which has morphed from being a campaign site for his run and eventual election as New Hampshire’s representative, now blares the words: Jonah For President: The Outsider’s Insider.

The site includes a bio, “My Struggle: The Jonah Ryan Story,” press clips also from the episodes and where Jonah stands on the issues of his cancer, education, nuclear disarmament, Daylight Saving Time and school lunches.

Ezra Kane

When Jonah’s Uncle Jeff (guest star Peter MacNicol) took him off New Hampshire’s Congressional ticket in the penultimate episode, Jeff mentioned that Jonah’s cousin, Ezra Kane, would be taking his place.

Ezra also now has own website, promoting his run, though the site has yet to bear a face since the role has yet to be cast.

When asked about the potential to bring on new faces next season, since he opened up the show to a wide campaign race, Mandel said the show already has a “rich, interesting bench of characters” but that an outsider could always swoop in.

“One of the things that’s always very interesting about politics is you get people like Obama, who came out of nowhere. Perhaps it’s time for somebody new to come out of nowhere and get under Selina’s skin in a different way,” he teased.

Veep

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#Jonah #Memoir #Meyers #President #Ryan #Season #Selina #Veep

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