Birdman

Birdman: Movie
Release: 2014


I came to the computer with high hopes, ebullient. I was ready to write this review, cross over another deadlink on the website. Is it anachronistic that I have a physical to do list of currently deadlinks on a website? It is handwritten, not typed. I'm not always so pretentious. But the French popped my bubble a little bit. I failed the first lesson. I have a very difficult time saying, "un homme et sa voiture". To be fair, I believe the voice recognition has difficulty registering my vocalization of the word, "un". I freely admit to the slaughtering of the innocent word for car. Still, c'est mon amie, no? I must admit that after passing the next two lessons I was starting to gain a little bit of momentum. The final bit of today's lesson featured a little boy walking up to a teacher clearly not eating an apple asking are you eating an apple? When the woman replies with the obvious and easily translated answer he retorts, "qu'est-ce que tu fais?"

Something clicked in that moment. It was cosmically significant. I stared and looked at the screen for a moment in disbelief. The universe was slowly beginning to bend to my desires. It was as clear of a sign as I can hope to get. The woman who was not eating un pomme held up a pad and a pen. "J'écris," she said. J'écris. J'écris.

I had intended to work on Exercise No. 2 of my dialogues after coming home from work, having sketched it out on my lunch break. It's not terrible, its insufficiently self-aware for the grandeur of its aims. It lacks the air of humility needed to pull off such highminded bullshit with a straight face that it captures the curated world of the 21st century. It lacks a je ne sais quoi. The humor needs to dry out a bit. It is a little bit cliché. I came home in the mood for some method writing. It was an excuse to drink to intoxication of the nectar of the gods. Not only was it an exercise in dialogue, it was an exercise in narcissism. Inevitably there will be the penance, the self-flagellation. The mortification of the flesh by word will come. Humility will follow. Tonight was the to be the night of the Dionysian ecstasy. Erin suggested a movie.

We spent a couple of slices of pizza discussing movie genres. I love to flip channels, scrolling through Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, Tubi, YouTube TV and Amazon Prime produces the same level of frustration, but it lacks the sanctifying scourge of good old fashioned channel surfing. Eventually the movie was picked based on my mood for a quirky comedy. Birdman was then selected from a dozen title or so. Erin opted to Google search instead of using my preferred method of selection. There is something to be said about her method's efficiency, though it lacks the cinematic elements and romance found in even the shallower neo-channel surfing available to me for what would be more than the price of cable were it not for the shared accounts. Don't worry Netflix, it isn't you. 

There was a time when I would not watch something because it was popular. As I have aged I find that I will still often not watch the popular things. This is because I have fallen behind on movies and television shows to such a degree that I find the to-do list (mental not physical) daunting to tackle. To escape the pressure I often wind up watching reruns of Seinfeld, Law & Order and independently produced YouTube history specials. I was already in this more mature hipster phase when 2014 unleashed this gem. Eight years passed before I watched this movie. Eight years passed  before j'écris Exercise No. 2 where I meander through Hemingway, memory, fatherhood, sonship, political crises, bloated self-importance and the eternal struggle for meaning, Eight years and I watch and I j'écris on the same day. I believe we have stretched the joke to the breaking point. I will pick up this thread elsewhere once I have consumed enough more to say something significant. Or, I won't.

In the piece I struggle with the structure of what modern literature should look like. In reality this struggle is not really one of literature as a whole. I am egotistical, but I hope that when it is refined it will be obvious enough to readers who don't know me in the flesh that modern literature really refers to something much more finite and insignificant, my literary voice. The aggrandizing is meant to rise to the level of absurdity. I am working on how to make that shine through in obvious ways that aren't obvious. I'm trying to nail down the correct balance. I'm also trying to discover what are the limits to my interest in things like quotation marks, punctuation in relation to quotation marks and my commitment to uniformity in usage of both quotation marks and the punctuation rules entailed within that use, disuse or misuse of quotation marks. It is an odd obsession at the moment. Suffice it to say that I am at the point of the Young Man as an Artist in the Joyce timeline. 

That was grand, but as I look at my naked wrists I have a vision, a memory of something more tangible than the experience. I picture myself wearing a WWJD bracelet? It is enough for a disciple to be like his teacher. Let me break down the parable for you. I am not at the point of Joyce when he wrote wrote A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Far from it. I'm not even at the point where he came up with the idea for Stephen Hero. The student is not above the teacher. What I am saying is this, I am young in my literary experiments. I will mature and that will change things.

These reviews are not meant to be the normal reviews you get for movies, books or albums. There are enough of those in the world already. They are more exercises of the moment, meant to capture the relative feelings associated with the experience of that which is being reviewed. To put it arrogantly, it is a study of not just the art or the artist, but the interaction between the observer and the art with the aim of seeing if that interaction between observer and object d'art will break the barriers to allow for interaction between the artist and the audience. As such I needn't say things like, spoiler alert. Besides that, most movies that I will review here will be nearly a decade old. If you haven't watched them before me you can't blame me for spoiling them. You and I are equally culturally irrelevant. Edward Norton might not be likeable as Mike, but he isn't wrong when he rants about Hollywood committing cultural genocide. It may not be the worst thing to be behind in consuming the fast food equivalents that Hollywood is churning out these days.

Exercise No. 2, working title: the search for significance in the face of modern bread & circuses talks about capturing the dissatisfaction of modernity. It doesn't accomplish it fully, but I think it shows flashes. In the discussing process through an allegorical jeremiad on America I trey to convey the brokenness and hopelessness of modernity. It drives one to megalomania and the megalomania drives one mad. Funnily enough, Birdman seems to touch on that too. Exercise No. 2, working title: (discarded) the absolute freedom of pessimism, or, a conversation I had with an anonymous Senator's aide last week. The handwritten edition was rawer, more vitriolic, more in keeping with the mean-spirited vibe of this present age. Birdman is a kindred spirit to literary collage. Birdman ends in suicide, consumed by the flames of hyperreality. It is high tragedy. Collage as literature attempts to operate in the realm of post-tragedy. To steal from Žižek, my collage to be its truest self, must become a farce. 

I will bask in the glories of this self-satisfying scribble for only a few minutes longer. It is late. I am tired. I must still shower and it would appear that some mortification is necessary for a good night's sleep. I think I will read some Joyce before going to sleep.