Great until...

Rating: 10/10 (22 January 2015)

If you've seen this movie, you know what I'm talking about here. If not, go watch it. It's a great piece for the most part but prepare to be disappointed.
Basically a deadbeat one-hit wonder/father/ex-husband (Keaton) who once posed as famous superhero, Birdman, struggles with success, relevance and being genuine. However he is poisoned by his alter ego (Birdman) who is self-entitled, lazy, arrogant and a devout believer in cheap thrills aka explosions, tits, guns, Michael Bay and so on. Of course Birdman is always trying to get in Keaton's head.
Anyway, Keaton decides he's gonna rehash an old story on Broadway as a last resort all the while juggling being broke, his daughter/assistant/former rehabbed, an uncooperative yet skilled actor, an ex-wife and a potential baby mama. Here's where it gets good. The tone of the entire movie just sucks. It's painful and dark and discouraging and gritty. I absolutely loved it. It spoke to me. The acting was awesome. Every detail seemed to reflect on how creating something new is really really hard. Because in order to create something new, you have to keep turning yourself inside out and be real with yourself... Which honestly, is a really dark place to arrive at sometimes.
So obviously Keaton was there. He was in that dark place where he had nothing left but himself and his feelings and it was all on the line. Everything depended on this play. Now to go into a little more detail on how Keaton attained his entitled attitude - Apparently some tough critic gave him an encouraging note on a cocktail napkin after a performance earlier in his life and he got cocky and hit it big with Birdman which only taught him that he didn't have to work hard for anything. Later on he discovered the critic really doesn't give a crap about him or his lousy arrogant pompous ambitions to direct and star in his play. Oh I forgot to mention by the way... In the play, he's a deadbeat who gets cheated on and shoots himself dead. Now during the whole movie it seems that the play (getting darker and darker each preview performance) intentionally reflects Keaton's life as a failure so you're kind of being led to anticipate his fate unravel as a viewer.
Somewhere in the middle of the film, Keaton succumbs to Birdman who convinces him that he is better than everyone else and all he needs is Birdman to be successful. He then becomes deranged and fantasizes about flying around the city like superman. Now the important thing to mention here is that the whole tone in this scene is mockery as I understood it. NOT wonder and excitement. Cheesy mockery of the terrible mega blockbusters filled with the cheap thrills aka Transformers, Avengers and so on and so forth. This to me was portraying a false reality. An escape from his pain that would last so long until leading him to his certain death (just like the play)
So here is where the film had led me. Keaton had two choices. Listen to Birdman and stay a cocky delusional low life prick, or accept his valley and work to the bones to get out. So of course he continued to partake in Birdman's flighty fantasies so obviously he was going to die right? At the premier of his show, Keaton was faced with being more genuine with his acting so he decides to use a real gun at the ending suicide scene. Now I realize that he looked and saw that the gun was loaded so I said to myself, yes he will finally accept the fate he has chosen. Come to find out, he wakes up famous with a nose job.
He'd become a spectacle because he shot his nose off... And succeeded? This is where the movie really let me down. The whole movie was all about not caring what people think and not becoming a YouTube hit or a spectacle. And yet, this was the ending... He became famous for such an "artistic" sacrifice. The movie was supposed to be about the heart of the aching city. Not some celebrity who shoots his nose off for attention and flies out his hospital window while his daughter giggles at the sight of it.
The strong and true lesson is this. Hard work is unseen much but highly recognized for lifetimes. A celebrity is a temporary spectacle.
Unfortunately it seems as if Birdman is just as ignorant as it claims to be.