rivendellrose (
rivendellrose) wrote2021-06-13 08:34 pm
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movie night: birdman, or 'well that was a movie we have seen'
Most Saturday nights, after we put L to bed, The Boy and I watch a movie. They range pretty broadly -- on recent weekends we've seen Raya and the Last Dragon (loved it), Clue (very fun, although I kept weirdly expecting it to break into musical numbers), Knives Out (absolutely fabulous) and Twelve Monkeys (didn't really know wtf to make of it apart from feeling like I've now seen way too much of Bruce Willis' butt). Last Friday, The Boy suggested we watch The Lobster, which we've had an ongoing battle about pretty much ever since it came out. He wants to see it, I don't. In a last-ditch effort to avoid this movie, I brought up Birdman, which we'd discussed seeing before but never got around to. As I predicted, the promise of Michael Keaton playing a washed-up superhero actor trying to restart his career with a serious Broadway play was an effective distraction from a movie about a world where people decide what animal they're going to turn into when they... die? Something like that? I've never been totally clear.
To be clear, I have no good reason to avoid The Lobster as avidly as I have done, it's just that it sounds exactly like what happens whenever a literary fiction author takes into their head to write speculative fiction and then gets treated by every critic in the world as if they've just invented absolutely everything about science fiction, while anyone who's been reading the genre in the last decade or two (or three...) is like "...uh, yeah, that's been done a million times and also this book is super, deathly slow and has basically no plot."
Well, friends, let me tell you that I have reaped what I spent the last few years sowing, because it turns out, that's also basically what Birdman is. And it's not very fun.
It's not that I didn't know it was going to be a bit of a weird movie. I remember hearing an interview with Michael Keaton on Fresh Air back when it either came out or got nominated for something, and I remembered, for instance, that the voice of his former superhero character seemed to be haunting him. Okay. I was less prepared for the random moments telekinesis and flying and whatnot. But... I mean, the movie literally opens with Keaton in tighty-whities, levitating in his dressing room, so I can't say they didn't establish that aspect soon enough to be honest. Levitation and telekinesis for some reason. Noted. Moving on.
The trouble, at least as far as I was concerned, was that the movie... really did move on from that. And never explain it. I sort of thought there would be a standard gotcha like, oh, he's having a mental breakdown or has a brain tumor or something. But instead, even at the end, it's just like... oh, well, I guess he's flown away now. I guess he really is Birdman. Couldn't tell you what that's meant to mean, but... I guess that's what happened.
I could have forgiven all of that, frankly, because Michael Keaton is pretty fun to watch in the whole thing, except for everything else that was going on in the movie.
- Keaton's character's daughter is young and hot and just out of rehab and projects her daddy issues onto a semi-relationship with the asshole co-star, presumably because it a) pisses her daddy off and b) turns on the middle-aged male writer.
- How do I know the writer was a man? By everything a female character does or does not do in this whole movie.
- Seriously, there's a bit where the two actresses are mad at their respective boyfriends and so they make out.
- Oh, and Keaton's character's ex-wife is still coming to every single one of his previews and bringing him flowers before the show and hanging out in his hospital room and what even is happening here except male fantasy.
- In the second half of the movie literally every conflict that has been set up seeps away except for Keaton's character's weird angst and mental anguish about his career. Everything. All those nice conflicts set up at the beginning? Nothing. The only characters who remain and get some kind of arc are his daughter (because someone has to forgive him), his ex-wife (because she's still obsessed with him I guess?), and the producer, who is probably the most likable character out of the whole thing because he's constantly just like "We're trying to stage a Broadway play, here, can we please just make this happen? Please?"
About halfway through, I said "I'm sorry, I should've just gone along with The Lobster." I kept that feeling all the way through. And I say this as a person who normally loves backstage dramas and the like, because I've never quite given up my theater-kid obsession.
Anyway. It wasn't Michael Keaton's fault. But I really do wish I'd just sucked it up and let The Boy put on The Lobster.
To be clear, I have no good reason to avoid The Lobster as avidly as I have done, it's just that it sounds exactly like what happens whenever a literary fiction author takes into their head to write speculative fiction and then gets treated by every critic in the world as if they've just invented absolutely everything about science fiction, while anyone who's been reading the genre in the last decade or two (or three...) is like "...uh, yeah, that's been done a million times and also this book is super, deathly slow and has basically no plot."
Well, friends, let me tell you that I have reaped what I spent the last few years sowing, because it turns out, that's also basically what Birdman is. And it's not very fun.
It's not that I didn't know it was going to be a bit of a weird movie. I remember hearing an interview with Michael Keaton on Fresh Air back when it either came out or got nominated for something, and I remembered, for instance, that the voice of his former superhero character seemed to be haunting him. Okay. I was less prepared for the random moments telekinesis and flying and whatnot. But... I mean, the movie literally opens with Keaton in tighty-whities, levitating in his dressing room, so I can't say they didn't establish that aspect soon enough to be honest. Levitation and telekinesis for some reason. Noted. Moving on.
The trouble, at least as far as I was concerned, was that the movie... really did move on from that. And never explain it. I sort of thought there would be a standard gotcha like, oh, he's having a mental breakdown or has a brain tumor or something. But instead, even at the end, it's just like... oh, well, I guess he's flown away now. I guess he really is Birdman. Couldn't tell you what that's meant to mean, but... I guess that's what happened.
I could have forgiven all of that, frankly, because Michael Keaton is pretty fun to watch in the whole thing, except for everything else that was going on in the movie.
- Keaton's character's daughter is young and hot and just out of rehab and projects her daddy issues onto a semi-relationship with the asshole co-star, presumably because it a) pisses her daddy off and b) turns on the middle-aged male writer.
- How do I know the writer was a man? By everything a female character does or does not do in this whole movie.
- Seriously, there's a bit where the two actresses are mad at their respective boyfriends and so they make out.
- Oh, and Keaton's character's ex-wife is still coming to every single one of his previews and bringing him flowers before the show and hanging out in his hospital room and what even is happening here except male fantasy.
- In the second half of the movie literally every conflict that has been set up seeps away except for Keaton's character's weird angst and mental anguish about his career. Everything. All those nice conflicts set up at the beginning? Nothing. The only characters who remain and get some kind of arc are his daughter (because someone has to forgive him), his ex-wife (because she's still obsessed with him I guess?), and the producer, who is probably the most likable character out of the whole thing because he's constantly just like "We're trying to stage a Broadway play, here, can we please just make this happen? Please?"
About halfway through, I said "I'm sorry, I should've just gone along with The Lobster." I kept that feeling all the way through. And I say this as a person who normally loves backstage dramas and the like, because I've never quite given up my theater-kid obsession.
Anyway. It wasn't Michael Keaton's fault. But I really do wish I'd just sucked it up and let The Boy put on The Lobster.