The opposition between reality and fantasy is a theme of the film. Fantasy redeemed Riggan's life and questioned his choices. At the beginning of the film, Reagan floats in mid-air, and Birdman's voice presses him as to why he is here. From this scene, Birdman's voice is repeated with Reagan's encounter. Reagan was often questioned silently. This profound sense of powerlessness and Reagan's superpowers always came in pairs, suggesting that superpowers were a reverie Reagan used to comfort himself. In fact, Reagan was not the only one who had a similar struggle. Almost every character in the film is under tremendous pressure and pain, and needs to use dream soil to reconcile the powerlessness in reality. Sam drags the shadow of drug addiction and plays suicide games and truth or dare to replicate passion and romance; Mike is talented but domineering, and can only be true and strong on stage; Lesley and Laura ( Laura) in the face of frustrated love and career, can only heal the scars with same-sex warmth. Interestingly, while Birdman's ending wasn't too bad -- one might even say Reagan's stage play was a smash on Broadway -- none of these inconsistencies were resolved. More interestingly, Reagan should have settled with Birdman in the end. Unrecognizable, he finally forced the bird man who used to be armed with a halberd to the toilet, and said "goodbye, fuck your mother", which is considered to have the capital to abandon the bird man. Then he plunged headlong into the fantasy of flying - though it was no longer clear if it was Reagan's or Sam's.
The scene of Reagan flying is very similar to the imagination of the paralyzed hero in "Eternal Sleep". Reagan's situation at the time also resembled a paralyzed patient who only wanted to die. He knew that the first performance of the performance would turn into a tragic ending, but he fantasized that he could achieve Nirvana like a birdman. And Reagan's pursuit is like a diver's pursuit of the sea in "Blue Sea and Blue Sky". Ordinary people may only see the coldness and silence of the deep sea, but divers feel that there is what they are looking for. Like the protagonists in these two films, Reagan needed not so much success as physical presence.
The discussion of existence is a hidden thread in Birdman. Reagan's vanity mirror with Kant's "Things are things themselves, not words about them" - what Reagan himself was, he ultimately failed to find out; Reagan learned that critics decided to ruin his stage play Stumbled out of the bar after the news, and heard the classic Macbeth line ("out out brief candle..") read out like bad news by passers-by - Shakespeare's nihilism was perfect for Reagan, his life What does it mean other than voice and anger, the movie doesn't answer; Sam hysterically accuses Reagan of his sharpest question, "You don't exist," which Reagan has no way of refuting; Reagan later fantasizes about his own success, saying The defense is actually "I exist", just as existence comes after success.
Precisely because Reagan was looking for the meaning of existence, not the success itself, even if the stage play was recognized by the media, he could not be satisfied - like a candle burning at both ends, even if it is beautiful, what is left in the end is nothing but a void. It is conceivable that Reagan, who gave up the "Birdman" series and pursued the original intention of being an actor when he was a child, scoffed at the critics' opinion that they only put labels and don't look at the substance. The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance", and "The Surreal". How ironic he should feel. So far, Reagan's last efforts have failed, and he can only rely on the illusion of flying to make a lie. Perhaps Reagan's fate was already in the words of Sam: "It's Oprah, Hallmark, R. Kelly bad".
View more about Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) reviews
