An Insider's Movie

Rating: 5/10 (29 August 2015)

Tedious. That was my one-word review with about 20 minutes left to go in "Birdman" (while watching it on free HBO), when I was just waiting for it to end.
Then I checked reviews online to see what others thought of the ending and was surprised to find that this movie won the Best Picture Oscar this year. Oh, right. This movie is about Hollywood and Hollywood loves to celebrate itself. Critics are part of that insider's world, as shown in the movie, so they loved it, too.
The first shot of Riggan Thompson levitating in the air makes it clear that he blurs the line between fantasy and reality, and is continued through the film. The scene of a celebrity trashing his dressing room is given a refreshing take when we see Riggan using his "Birdman" powers to destroy stuff, with his "Birdman" inner voice accompanying him. The first jumping scene works, when Riggan imagines himself flying over the city above all us humble folk. But the ending is just mildly puzzling.
However, I don't care enough about the characters or the story to watch the movie again for clues I might have missed. Riggan is shown to be a jerk from the beginning, when he arranges for an accident to knock out a fellow actor from his play. If the play is his production, why can't Riggan just fire the actor openly, like a grown-up and a professional? Why should we care about Riggan? I hope he did succeed in offing himself, at the end; that would be one less self-absorbed jerk in the world.
Maybe that's the point. When we look behind the curtain at the world of actors and acting, we find the same tedious screw-ups we see everywhere else in life. We, the audience, should stop celebrating actors and elevating them above us. Birdman takes a dump on the toilet, too. We should also stop glamorizing them for temporarily taking us out of our own tedious lives, as they point out.
The ending of "Inception" worked because it followed a cracking good story that drew in the audience, with characters we cared about. The director respected his audience, as shown in the way he challenged us. The ambiguous ending of "Birdman" does not work because we just don't care enough.
Dazzling technique only works when it enhances the story. "The Lord of the Rings" managed perspective and the relative sizes of the characters in a seamless way that allowed the viewer to focus on the story. The technique in "Birdman" is self-congratulatory and distracts from the story, so it does not work. It screams at us, "look how brilliant I am!" It's the kind of film that self-important and pretentious people think they're supposed to find smart and important, because it reflects themselves.
There's a huge irony here. In "Birdman", social media could well make Riggan's play succeed with the public, even if the official, professional critics deliberately try to kill it. In real life, however, the critics loved this movie while the general public ignored it.
As some other audience reviewers pointed out, "Birdman" won a lot of Oscars this year, but will be forgotten over time. Anyone remember "Shakespeare in Love" or "American Beauty"? No one talks about those films anymore, though they won a boatload of Oscars in their day. Okay, now back to my tedious life.