Our inner demons never stop not even when we are winners for the outside world. It’s BIRDMAN theme, an awesome film directed by an excellent Alejandro González Iñárritu in 2015, when 4 Oscars were given to it: best film, direction, photografy, original screenplay. The plot is about Riggan Thomson, a celebrity now fallen, an actor who desperately tries to distance himself from the same superhero that did make him so famous.
Riggan lives a hard artistic moment – he feels he is a failed actor – and a disastrous economic and family situation, therefore he asks himself an existential question: to remain a decayed theater actor o to go back to personify Birdman, the typical hollywood star loved by the average audience. So, he decide to put on a Broadway play based on the book What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver, hoping to gain a new recognition, as an actor, as big as when he interpreted Birdman in the past movies with special effects. The new actor within the cast chosen by the protagonist, Mike Shiner – interpreted by always amazing Edward Norton, represents the idea of the perfect actor who acts in the real world and is himself on the stage with dramatic consequences. The show opens and his interpretation enthusis the audience and critics. But,during the last act right at last second, instead of pretending to commit suicide with a gunshot to the head, Riggan replaces the toy gun with a real one and shoots himself. Luckily, the shot is superficial only and, when he wakes up wearing a bandage on his nose, his manager Jake informs him of the great success of his show. And just when everyone adores him, his daugther too, and everything in his life looks like being ok, Riggan – who sees his alter ego Birdman silent and resigned, such a potent metaphorical image, and figures out he’s not the settled person and character everyone thinks he is, cause he hasn’t solved his inner demons at all – heads to the open window of his hospital room. The conclusion shows the tragedy of a man who is not able to rise again not even when he achieves all his strongly longed for targets. The only one who survives him is the same character to whom, maybe without even realizing it, Riggan had totally and tragically identified in his tormented life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJfLoE6hanc
