Review of Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014) by Plain C — 16 Feb 2016

Birdman.

In the past few years, people were more and more addicted to the internet whether using their phones or computers. There are a lot of social media around there, such as Twitter, Facebook or YouTube. In Birdman, there were several plots showed that how can these media impact a show or a person. Moreover, how can a voice in your head influence you? That's what this movie was talking about. This movie happened on New York Broadway, which talked about a washed out former star. He always heard a voice from a character he used to play, which was Birdman. The movie is based on this to tell a story of this guy's life.

Riggan (Michael Keaton) was a quite famous actor who used to play Birdman. He started his new career at Broadway, and these days he started rehearsal his first show, but there was an extremely creditable movie reviewer whom would write a bad review whether she watched the show or not. And then there was the first emergency that they needed find a new guy to substitute another guy that accidently got hit. The actress from the show, Laura (Andrea Riseborough), said she knew Mike (Edward Norton) who was quite famous at that time can substitute the gap. Mike's acting was quite awesome, but his behavior was not that pleasant. Along the time, Riggan always can hear a voice from 'Birdman', which he hated, talks to him and wanted to convince him he is Birdman. Throughout the whole movie, there were several points always remind Riggan that he is the Birdman. For example, when he was in a bar on Broadway there were few fans wanted to take photo with Riggan as a Birdman player, and then when he naked walk through the Time Square there were some people wanted his signature and photo. These parts made Riggan think he might be the birdman in some ways. When Riggan was struggling with his first show, his daughter said a lot of stuff to him. Such as, ' it's not for the sake of art. It's because you want to feel relevant again. Well, there's a whole world out there where people fight to be relevant every day'. Due to this talk he started thinking what he really wants. When they were rehearsal, Mike told Riggan he could easily find out he was using a fake gun, and then during the real show he pulled outa real gun and shot himself. That made everyone know him mostly from social media, but in the movie Riggan doesn't like social media, but the fact was the social media helped he a lot in his first show. It also showed that nowadays people are addicted to their online social life.

Using drumbeats as the background music were quite impressive, because the beats lead the tempo of the movie and would make audiences and movie have a strong connection. With the drum, audiences would get more into the movie. Furthermore, the whole movie was a continuous one shoot, therefore, all actors had to be extremely related. It's quite hard for all actors, because they all had so many lines to remember and they all needed a good acting. Moreover, the only one take style might make audiences thinking during the whole movie instead of just watching a movie not even thinking.

I think this movie is more like adult movie, which the parents better not bring their children to watch it. In the movie there were some clips about drugs, smoking and sexual related. Maybe parents can go watch it as a date night movie.