DOUBLE FEATURE 07.24.20
Feeling Down: Birdman + Loving Vincent
Most everyone has been exposed to mental illness, either through personal experience or a family member or friend. The World Health Organization reports that one in four adults is affected by a condition, whether it be depression, bipolar, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, or attention deficit disorder. This number is likely to grow in the age of Covid-19. Even though high-profile celebrities have recently gone public with their struggles, a mental disorder still carries such a stigma that many people are embarrassed and choose not to seek help. This week’s Double Feature pairs two films that, though extremely different, explore the impact that mental illness can have on creativity.
“I put my heart and soul into my work and have lost my mind in the process,” Vincent van Gogh once remarked. While there have been myriad books and films investigating what specific malady the Dutch painter may have suffered, none of them have approached the subject like the movie Loving Vincent. The first film to be fully animated with oil-paintings, Loving Vincent, attempts to recreate the world as van Gogh may have seen it by literally immersing the viewer into the artist’s paintings. One-hundred-and-twenty-five painters contributed to the making of the film, all of whom were directed to paint in the style of van Gogh and nearly all of the characters and settings were subjects of the artist’s most famous works. It is a graceful, lyrical film and the score beautifully complements the visuals.
Few films place us inside the mind of their protagonists like Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). Michael Keaton delivers one of his best performances as Riggan Thomson, a former star of a superhero film franchise who is trying to resurrect his waning career by staging an adaptation of a short story by Raymond Carver. His character struggles with depression, suicidal tendencies and schizophrenia, often uttering phrases like “I’m nothing” and “I don’t exist” and argues with a voice in his head, that of Birdman, the superhero that made him famous. The Academy Award-winning film, directed by Alejandro G. Inarritu, is constructed to look like one continuous shot from Riggan’s point of view, which forces the viewer to reckon with Riggan’s demons and tenuous grasp of reality as he does. Frenetic, chaotic, compassionate, harrowing at times and darkly humorous, Birdman succeeds as an ingeniously creative, relatable exploration of a particular strain of the human condition.
