>>62249547ending was dumb,
excellent pacing cinematography and acting.
good writing.
just a bad ending: was supposed to be a relief that his life would end, so that it wasn't really suicide but was a liberation, kind of a celebration of death.
It doesn't work because his life just isn't that shitty, it's not that out of control. I guess it could be about the cost of great art, but when you try and hold it up to It's A Beautiful Day or Mindgame, which both use death and loss of identity as sort of a relief, it really falls short. This is when magical realism becomes a crutch, because of saying anything meaningful, the artist blanches and under uses its most prominent mechanic, which is the conflagration of reality and fantasy, that our subjective experiences have actual weight and have the power to inform the course of events even if they cannot be considered real--that this very quality makes them real.
This is good and fine, but Birdman is not just a movie about a person in pain, but in many ways is a story about a play and the ensemble of characters it connects, so it's a story about art. And the play is a success, so Kostner's leap from the window is totally unnecessary. We're just not as invested in his character as we are in the group and the success of the project. In this light, his jump and subsequent "flying away" which is really a metaphor about his death being freedom or even validation, reeks of romantic hand-wringing in the face of infinity. It is, quite literally, magical realism for pussies.
