Birdman Explained: Part 2

This is the second and final part of my analysis of Birdman or: (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). For Part 1, go here.

ACT IV: Broadway Suicide

We’ve reached that maddening concluding scene. And we’ve gathered the symbolic framework to interpret it. But we haven’t yet addressed why Riggan commits the act that puts him in the hospital in the first place, obviously a pivotal question.   

The answer, it turns out, is right in the script. Recall Birdman’s final encouragement to Riggan:

Let’s go back one more time and show them what we’re capable of. We have to end it on our own terms. With a grand gesture. Flames. Sacrifice. Icarus. You can do it. You hear me? You are…Birdman!

Birdman intends with this speech to motivate Riggan to return to the Birdman role, and for the moment, he appears to succeed. But Riggan’s next act isn’t to return as Birdman. Instead, he shoots himself onstage.

Therefore, we can only conclude that Riggan reconsiders Birdman’s motivating speech, and decides that a “grand gesture” of even greater proportions—a “sacrifice” that would literally “end it” on his “own terms”—would be to commit suicide in front of his audience. In other words, Birdman convinces Riggan to resume his famous role and go out with a bang, and Riggan later takes it a step further: why not go out with an even bigger bang?

Riggan’s suicide attempt is thus a product of narcissism—the end result of the conceitedness that gradually consumes him as the movie progresses. Birdman, remember, is the last ploy of Riggan’s embattled ego to reaffirm itself, and the suicide idea grows out of the self-absorbed rhetoric that Birdman uses.

We can confirm that Riggan got the suicide idea from Birdman’s speech by examining Riggan’s conversation with Sylvia before he takes the stage. Speaking to his ex-wife, he says: “I am calm, I’m great actually. You know, I got this little voice that comes to me sometimes…tells me the truth.”

Consider also an image that appears multiple times in a quickly cut montage after Riggan shoots himself. The image depicts a comet-like object falling through the sky. Remembering Birdman’s speech, this must be a rendition of “Icarus,” the mythical Greek who fatally fell to Earth after flying too close to the sun with wings of wax.

Birdman had referenced Icarus to invoke the hubris commonly associated with the character—to inspire Riggan to summon his pride and, like Icarus, end things with a soaring spectacle. Thus, the appearance of Icarus in this post-gunshot montage indicates that Riggan has indeed decided to end things like Icarus—but rather than end his career, which Birdman had urged, he has chosen instead to end his life.

While we’re on the subject, let’s go through other images that occur in this post-gunshot montage.

Firstly, consider a strange scene of a marching band and costumed superheroes on the theater stage. These are the same band and characters that Riggan encountered in Times Square while in his underpants. The image’s inclusion therefore recalls Riggan’s accidental viral stardom: it represents an eye-popping spectacle, which, as we have established, is what Riggan wants his suicide to be. The band represents the ethos of the suicide attempt, which is, to quote Birdman: “Give the people what they want!”

The other notable image in the montage is a beach with jellyfish washed ashore. This explicitly references a story Riggan told Sylvia earlier. The story: after she caught him cheating years ago, he attempted to drown himself in the ocean, but he was saved when the pain of jellyfish stings forced him out of the water. This story revolves around suicide, so the image of the jellyfish (which, like the flaming Icarus, also appears in the opening credits) confirms that Riggan indeed intended to kill himself. Sylvia later suspects as much in the hospital, doubting Jake and Dickinson’s assumption that it was an accident.

But we don’t really need this confirmation, because we see Riggan load his gun before going onstage. The more important significance of the jellyfish image, I believe, is that the jellyfish incident occurred at a crushing low point in Riggan’s life. The reference to the jellyfish here, then, indicates that this newest suicide attempt has also been made at a low point, which fits with our analysis thus far. (Any interpretation, on the other hand, that concluded that Riggan has made peace with himself at this point in the movie would seem to be at odds with the appearance of the jellyfish here.)

Additionally, the jellyfish invoke a kind of miraculousness in Riggan’s life. He’s already escaped death once, and now he’ll have escaped it twice. Why has the universe given him these extra chances? Is there something he’s meant to do? How can he break out of his downward spiral and find the redemption that he seems destined for?

ACT V: Out the Window

Riggan wakes up a phenomenon. The suicide attempt, as I noted before, has been incorrectly interpreted as an accident. This has galvanized the art world, with Dickinson hailing the supposed accident as a new aesthetic: “The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance.” Popular media, too, is captivated: news reports breathtakingly discuss the gruesome scene, and shouting crowds of paparazzi swarm Riggan’s hospital door. Sam reveals that she has created a popular Twitter account for her father, and she rests for a minute in his hospital bed, glad to be alive.

Everything, in summary, has worked out wonderfully for Riggan.  But only one of those things is important to Riggan at this moment. Do you know which one it is?

I’ve chosen to wait until this point to reference the movie’s opening epigraph, a quote from Raymond Carver’s writings:

–And did you get from this life what you wanted, even so?

–I did

–And what did you want?

–To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the Earth

Since this quotation appears before the movie begins, it’s tempting to misinterpret it. Specifically, we might apply it too quickly, reasoning that Riggan’s quest for theater stardom, introduced in the movie’s opening sequences, must be a quest for adulation: “to feel myself beloved.”

I believe that this is where almost everyone goes wrong in analyzing the film. In fact, as we have established, Riggan wants to mend his embattled ego, and he cares little for the adoration of anonymous viewers, whether art-minded or pop-minded. Recall that he mocks Shiner’s prioritizing of prestige over popularity, a swipe at affected art-lovers. Likewise, when speaking to Sylvia, he mocks his own brief viral stardom as “so pathetic,” a dig at the social media-obsessed masses.

Does Riggan change his mind about these various types of viewers after his suicide? It appears not. When Jake giddily shows Riggan the Times article, Riggan is unmoved. When Sam relays Riggan’s impressive new Twitter following, he similarly shrugs it off. He has always known that the “love” he might appear to receive from these anonymous people is phony, unrelated to his real self. In the hospital, he demonstrates no change in this regard.

But there’s one audience whose approval he has sought, albeit extremely clumsily.  

I’m referring to Sam. Throughout the movie, Riggan makes genuine attempts to reconcile with Sam, who resents him for letting his career prevent him from parenting. But these attempts fail wildly, as Riggan’s maniacal investment in the play’s success makes him controlling and oblivious. His most honest attempt to extend an olive branch—a humble “thank you” for Sam’s hard work on set—devolves into an ugly shouting match in which he insults her friends and lack of ambition, and she heckles him with barbs such as “You’re not important, get used to it!”

Riggan’s repeated failure to reconnect with Sam has occupied a central place in his mounting desperation. Consider that right before he attempts suicide, he shares assorted regrets with Sylvia, who attempts to comfort him by stating, “You have Sam.” Riggan responds tearfully, “Not really.”

But in the hospital things are different. The scariness of the incident has melted away Sam’s tough exterior, and she lets herself be comforted by her fortunately-alive father. Her gift to her dad of a Twitter account, although it goes over his tech-challenged head, is a touching gesture of support, and Riggan surely interprets it as such.

I stake my analysis, therefore, on the claim that Sam’s brief rest in Riggan’s hospital bed is the climax of Birdman. Only at this moment does Riggan learn, or remember, that one’s greatness rests not on the basis of merits or success, but on the love of a single person. In short: “to call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the Earth.”

All along Riggan has wanted to feel special, and now he realizes that his alternating quests for theater and popular success have been misguided. What makes one truly special and important, he now understands, is the type of bond he shares in this moment with his daughter.

We know that this fundamental change occurs in Riggan because of what happens afterward. He walks to the bathroom, examines his new nose (which symbolizes the loss of Birdman’s ‘beak’), and then sees Birdman on the toilet, whom he tells, “Fuck off.”  Consider how significant a change this is in Riggan. The narcissism-fueling Birdman had been a driving influence just prior to this, planting the idea for a suicide attempt with his grandiose talk of ending it “on our own terms.” But Riggan now easily brushes him off. Riggan’s ego, it seems, is no longer threatened: with Sam’s love assured, Riggan no longer needs Birdman.

This analysis also explains the reemergence of Riggan’s full-fledged “powers,” since, as we discussed in ACT III, these powers reflect Riggan’s own belief in his self-worth, independent of whether he returns to the Birdman franchise. With his belief in his own exceptionality rejuvenated by Sam, Riggan jumps from a tremendous height—and flies.

There’s a critical difference, though, between this flight and his previous one. Whereas after the earlier flight, a cab driver had hassled Riggan to pay for his ride, demonstrating that the flight was imagined, on this occasion Sam rushes to the window and looks up: she sees Riggan flying, the first time that any character has witnessed Riggan’s supposed abilities. 

This symbolically means that, for the first time, someone else is recognizing Riggan’s specialness. He’s not just imagining his own worth anymore: he is, for the first time in the film, a truly exceptional person—that is, exceptional in the eyes of a person who loves him, and whom he loves in return.

This is the meaning of Birdman‘s ending shot. 

No, Riggan doesn’t jump to his death. We’ve already seen him jump off a building earlier in the film, and that clearly wasn’t a literal event. No, Riggan doesn’t kill himself onstage. That’s a copout that wrecks the story arc and provides no explanation for the noticeable surge in Riggan’s self-esteem by the end of the film.

Rather, the ending is an uplifting one. The majority of the film consists of Riggan being progressively consumed by his own narcissism to the point of attempting suicide as a “grand gesture” to awe the public he despises. Actually, this decline is summarized quite well by Riggan’s own character from the Carver adaptation, who laments, “I spend every fucking minute pretending to be someone I’m not. … I don’t exist. I’m not even here.”

But by finally reconciling with his semi-estranged daughter, Riggan finds self-worth that goes beyond any artistic or popular stardom.  For the first time, he feels himself beloved on the Earth: he is special, not in the way he had been chasing, but in the real way: from the perspective of his family. He no longer needs the approval of theater critics, and he no longer needs to be famous as Birdman. After all, to Sam, he’s a real life superhero.

 

—Jim Andersen

For more movies explained see my analysis of Nope.