Birdman (2014)

8/10 – Birdman begins with an epigraph by Raymond Carver set against a credit sequence taken from mid-1960s Jean-Luc Godard and a musical score that sounds like a Rashied Ali solo from late Coltrane (performed by a drummer who suddenly appears at times during the film), and then cuts to Michael Keaton meditating in his underwear while actually levitating in his dressing room, a washed-up actor who once played a superhero named Birdman (that regularly converses with him) and who is now trying to put on a Broadway version of Carver’s “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love” that includes a dream sequence with women wearing elk antlers and co-stars a snotty, preening method actor (Edward Norton) who demands to have a tanning bed in his dressing room because he’s "playing a redneck" and who reads Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges while sunning himself. And that’s the kind of film Birdman is. A frenetic mess of a movie. It veers wildly between dark humor, fantasy sequences, backstage Broadway dramedy, Hollywood satire, (interesting) commentary on social media, questions about the nature of art, and some good old fashioned, slightly twisted, existential crisis. It’s basically a Theatre of the Absurd piece about the conflicted mind of its protagonist as he faces life without meaning. The quick visual reference to Borges and Labyrinths is no accident. Director Alejandro González Iñárritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki structured the film so that (in theory) it feels like one long take, and the camera’s multiple dizzying turns down the labyrinthine backstage hallways of the St. James Theatre replicate the complex, tortured mind of the protagonist as he tries to sort through his life as an actor, artist, celebrity, father, husband and overall human being. Luckily, it’s a crazy, often hilarious mental and spiritual crisis. I thought Birdman was one of the funniest films I’ve seen in a while, but it’s probably not for everyone. It’s a strange, gleefully over-the-top affair. Not perfect by any means, but crackling with energy. What seemed like a wild, sometimes bumpy roller-coaster ride for Alexandra and I will probably, for some, feel like a convoluted tale signifying nothing. Most likely you’ll know by the first scene which way it’s going to go for you. I hated Michael Keaton as Batman and never liked his other films (not that I bothered to watch many of them), but I thought he was very good in this. And the rest of the cast also excel. (The film just won the Screen Actors Guild’s highest award of Best Ensemble Acting.) Besides Norton’s terrific turn as the arrogant “pure” stage actor, Zack Galifianakis does great in a (thankfully) very different kind of role for him. I also liked Emma Stone as Keaton’s daughter. Some great writing throughout. Lubezki’s camera work is often beautiful, especially on the big screen. And the musical score – often just drums – is a refreshing change of pace from the Alexandre Desplat-ization of Hollywood. If you’re a Raymond Carver fan with a sense of humor, there’s the added pleasure of watching the frequently awful attempts to stage one of his greatest stories. (And a nice “Thank You” to Tess Gallagher at the end of the movie.) I should knock off a half-point for the disappointing ending, but I had such a fun time during the rest of the ride that I’ll cut it some slack. There’s an awful lot going on in Bridman, and not all of it works, but I look forward to re-watching it later to sift through the craziness. It was one of the most enjoyable cinematic experiences I’ve had in a while.

A List of Books

Liam recently put together a "book meme" and asked five of his friends to do the same. I hate chain-letterish things, so I swore under my breath that I wouldn't do it. But I liked what he wrote, and I appreciate his choosing me. Plus, I enjoyed trying to work through some of the questions. (And, of course, I'm self-centered and want everyone to know what I think about certain books.) I refuse, however, to ask anyone else to do it. (But if you read the list and don't do your own, the phone may ring and your prayers may or may not be answered, and, G-d forbid, your pinkie may get caught in the blender. Or worse. You may be cursed with receiving an endless number of chain letters.)

Weldon Kees

1. One book that changed your life: The Voice That Is Great Within Us: American Poetry of the Twentieth Century, edited by Hayden Carruth (Bantam Books, 1970). When I was about fifteen years old, I stole this chubby little paperback in an act of adolescent bravado/stupidity. Most of my experience with poetry up to that point had come via rock and roll. (“I am the Lizard King. I can do anything.”) Poetry on the page seemed a little uncool, something forced upon me by an unforgiving educational institution. Suddenly, with this book, a new world blossomed open; it was like a lightning flash that opened up a magical door. In the work of poets such as Frank O’Hara, Weldon Kees, and T.S. Eliot, I found a whole range of new and interesting voices. The stories they told me about life weren’t the same stories I had gotten from television, school lessons, movies or even rock music. The world out there suddenly seemed a lot bigger and more mysterious, a little darker, a little more intense, but also more intriguing and exciting. I stopped trying to write rock songs and began crafting my words for the page. After a couple of decades and many, many moves, I still have my battered and bruised copy of the book - its cover barely held on by strapping tape - and it still brings me great pleasure. Luckily, I stole a great anthology. Carruth did an excellent job with the poets he included and by choosing interesting work that wasn’t typically anthologized. He did so well, in fact, that the book is still in print after 36 years, an amazing feat for a poetry anthology.

2. One book that you've read more than once: I haven’t read that many books all the way through more than once. I tend to re-read parts of books, sometimes numerous times. I think especially of Pensées by Pascal, Cutting through Spiritual Materialism by Trungpa Rinpoche, the Bible, Sixty Stories by Donald Barthelme, and lots of poetry. I guess there are a handful of novels I’ve read straight-through twice: The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway and The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler come to mind. Also Going after Cacciato by Tim O’Brien.

3. One book that you'd want on a desert island: The Norton Anthology of World Literature. From a practical standpoint, I can’t imagine a better choice. It contains 43 complete works (The Odyssey, Dante’s Inferno, Hamlet, Madame Bovary, Death in Venice, etc.) and large chunks of other major works. It also contains a good selection of texts from every major spiritual tradition. And hey, what other book can give you Sappho, Hildegard of Bingen, Rumi, García Marquez, and the dada poems of Tristan Tzara?

La Reina says this selection doesn’t count, however, because it’s a six-volume set. Like she’s suddenly an expert on Desert Island Rules & Regulations. I argue back that there’s a single ISBN and a single Library of Congress catalog record for this title, so it should be counted as one book. (I forget to mention that there are also individual ISBNs and catalog records for each volume, because that would only confuse matters.) We’re having dinner (veggie burgers and fresh green beans), and the conversation’s getting heated now. “And what about the Bible,” I add. “It’s actually a collection of books. Are you saying I could only take Ecclesiastes instead of the whole thing? You want me to tear out that part so it counts?” “But the Bible is contained within one set of covers,” she says, “so it’s okay.” “Oh, so I couldn’t take my three old paperbacks of The Lord of the Rings, but I could take a one-volume edition? That doesn’t make any sense.” This seems to confuse her. She looks like she’s getting ready to flick a green bean at me. I decide I better cool it. “Well, then, I’ll just take the one-volume edition of How to Get off a Desert Island When You’re Stuck with a Cranky Woman.” And that’s when she lovingly offers me her green bean.

4. One book that made you laugh: Sixty Stories by Donald Barthelme. La Reina says she can always tell when I'm reading Barthleme, because I have a particular kind of laugh. Kind of mischievous, she says. Brilliant, insightful, poetic, tremendously creative, and terribly funny, Barthelme ultimately conveys a great sense of wonder and humanity, as well as a deep appreciation for the tragic absurdity of life. This collection covers his work from the 1960s and 70s. Almost as good is Forty Stories, which covers some of his later work as well, including the wonderful "Overnight to Many Distant Cities." Honorable mention has to go to Without Feathers, by Woody Allen. I was reading it in the library one day in college and had to put it down because I was laughing so hard everyone started looking at me.

5. One book that made you cry: This was a tough one. I couldn't remember ever having cried while reading a book, though I figured it must have happened at some point. I've cried watching films. I've cried listening to music a number of times. Why shouldn't I cry at a book? I remember the end of Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls impacting me powerfully, but I wasn't crying. I still feel haunted by that final scene, though. Reading about Lester Young, Marvin Gaye and Eric Dolphy could have easily left me in tears. I just couldn’t recall. Finally, after a few days, something popped into my head. I remember getting choked up while listening to a tape of Martin Luther King’s speech the night before he died, which reminded me that I also shed tears at some point while reading through A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Harper & Row, 1986). It could have been his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” or “A Christmas Sermon on Peace, 1967.” It’s a powerful collection from one of the greatest human beings of the 20th Century.

Ben Webster

6. One book you wish had been written: A novel by Raymond Carver. In his great essay, "Fires," he talks about stealing out into his car at night to scribble his short stories and how he never had the time to write a novel. After a long, brave struggle to recover from alcoholism, he finally found some success as a writer and started to attain a bit of financial security. Only to die of cancer. Life sucks sometimes. It would also be nice to read a biography of the great tenor saxophonist Ben Webster. But at least we have his music.

7. One book you wish had never been written: In response to Liam’s answer to this question, I suggested that the world might have been better off if the Bible hadn’t been written, because so much bloodshed and inhumanity had resulted from it. (The same could probably be said of other major religious works). But then we would have missed out on a lot of beautiful and meaningful writing as well. As Saint Tom said, “If I exorcise my devils, well my angels may leave, too, and when they leave, they’re so hard to find.” Plus, it’s not the fault of the book, it’s the fault of the people who interpret the book according to their own desires, in order to justify whatever crap it is they’re trying to pull. Still, if we believed that Horton Hears a Who had been inspired by G-d and decided to start using it as the sacred text of our civilization, would we really come up with the Crusades again?

8. One book you're currently reading: The Revenge of God: the resurgence of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism in the modern world, by Gilles Kepel. (Originally published in France in 1991, translated by Alan Braley for Penn State University Press, 1994.) Kepel is a leading French scholar of Islam, Professor of Political Science in Paris. His book Jihad: On the Trail of Political Islam is considered by some to be one of the essential texts right now on what’s happening in the Middle East. (See, for example, Juan Cole’s useful Reading List.) I read Kepel's Bad Moon Rising, his (short) personal journal of traveling in the Middle East and the U.S. right after 9/11 and thought it was a unique and lyrical work. The Revenge of God is a more straightforward look at similarities between Islam, Christianity and Judaism as they have responded over the last half-century to “the crisis of modernism” and the perceived threats of secular humanism. He discusses attempts at re-Christianization, re-Islamization, and re-Judaization “from above” (by seizing political power, i.e. Khomeini and the Iranian revolution) and “from below” (via longterm grassroots efforts that can eventually exert political pressure, i.e. the Religious Right in the U.S.) Catholics may find his discussion of Vatican II interesting for being slightly different than one might expect, and for his foresight (he wrote this in 1991) in focusing on a prime mover in the Vatican’s efforts at re-Christianization, a certain Cardinal Ratzinger. He also spends a fair amount of time analyzing the Communion and Liberation movement in Italy, which I knew nothing about, and the charismatic movement in France that was inspired by the charismatic movement in the U.S. a decade earlier. (French charismatics, who knew?! I can only imagine what they sound like speaking in tongues. And how bitchy they get if you don’t speak in tongues as well as they do.) Of course, given Kepel’s background, the strength of the book is probably in his look at Islam and the various movements within it during the last part of the 20th century. I haven’t gotten to the part about the religious right in the U.S., but I did read criticism of that part of the book in a review, that it wasn't a very thorough or accurate analysis. I also haven’t gotten to the part about Judaism, so I don’t know what he covers there. His book is similar to the last part of Karen Armstrong’s Islam, which also discusses militant Islam and fundamentalist Christianity as reactions to a world that has lost its sense of the spiritual in the aftermath of the Enlightenment. It’s an interesting topic, and I find both of their takes on it to be respectful yet concerned, which is I guess where I find myself. I’d like to think that there’s a healthier middle ground than the extremes of Stalinism on one hand and al-Qaeda or the Moral Majority on the other. As I look around right now, I see religion to blame in part or entirely for much of the worst violence taking place in our world – militant Islamic terrorism, the U.S invasion of Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian nightmare, and the disturbing Pakistani-Indian situation, just to mention a few. I think it’s time for everyone to chill out and put their gods back in their holsters. I doubt Kepel is going to mention any positive paths forward in this book; he’s mainly interested in looking at how we got to this point. That other book is still waiting to be written. And it will be – because this topic is only going to become more important as the 21st century plods forward.

9. One book you've been meaning to read: Ulysses by James Joyce. One of these days, one of these days. I keep waiting for the movie version, but no such luck.