I'll just hide my response to Kublai in spoliers since it doesn't pertain to Birdman.
[spoiler]
Kublai Khan wrote:It's a successful blend of fiction and cinéma vérit. A brand-new cinematic style that could only be accomplished at great risk and expense by the director and the production company. You're trying to judge it as if it's just regular Hollywood dirge. You're looking for all the standard screenwriting story structures and you're seriously bummed because it's not conforming to what you're used to seeing. Thus you think the film is tedious and boring. It's not supposed to have a 5 point film story structure, because life isn't structured that way.
Stop looking to the end of the film for a summary of everything you watched. The pseudo-philosophical babbling was just that. Sorry that you've apparently only ever surrounded yourself with the most cleverest of wits and deepest of thinkers, but the majority of high school and college kids who have like "deep" conversations sound exactly that, except much worse. Hell, you're part of the internet age. Go back and read stuff you wrote when you were 17-18 and try not to cringe. But if you hate that sort of stuff, then avoid all of Richard Linklater's films. Except School of Rock, I guess.
Also, "saved by narration"? Really? Name one movie that's ever been made better by narration. Narration is the tool of shitty directors who resort to telling you something instead of showing you something.
{Should this whole digression be split off from the Birdman thread?}
The thing you don't get is that I don't discredit the film for being atypical. The amount of balls it took to try and make a film over the course of 12 years and have it be at all cohesive is impressive. That said, that doesn't make it interesting nor give it any real meaning. It is incredibly realistic but its difficult to make an average joe interesting. Not only did the film miss the mark on that respect, but it passed up opportunities to examine moments that define a character. Realism will only carry a film up to a certain point. If it offers nothing else, then I might as well just film myself sitting here at my computer typing this and then watching it. If a film can completely win you over with what is essentially a gimmick, that is fine. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I am happy plenty of people bought into the gimmick because success in a film like Boyhood opens the door for more atypical films. I think in that respect Boyhood and Birdman are similar. The use of so many long takes is a gimmick. Gimmicks are interesting and add a different flavor to a film. I would say a film definitely needs more that that though and, I would say, Birdman has that and Boyhood didn't. So please, don't try to assume you know what I want to see.
Also, I have read stuff I wrote at 17-18, it's terrrible. My friends and I had plenty of stupid and shitty deep conversations. I have some clever and witty friends, but I also have some stupid friends. But our naive pseudo-philosophical shit is a) not note worth (definitely not movie worthy) and b), despite being cringe worthy, didn't sound so much like fake dialogue clearly written by an adult trying to awkwardly sound like a young hipster.
As for a film being made better by narration, I would pick The Shawshank Redemption. Think of the scene where Tim Robbins is getting raped by the sisters. They couldn't show us every assault. The would just be absurd, but showing one and combining that with the narration about how sometimes he could fight them off and sometimes he could gave us a better look at the life he was living without have 5 hours of prison rape footage. In fact, any film that spans years of time, really benefits from narration because all that would be impossible to show when condensed down to 90-180 minutes. That break in realism actually helps with the realism for the rest of the film because it gives us context and understanding for what we end up being shown. I would agree that plenty of shitty directors do abuse narration to give lazy short cuts, but to dismiss it entirely? Please change your ranking of Shawshank if you think narration is so shitty.[/spoiler]
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