I’m glad Birdman and Inarratu won the Oscars for best picture and director.
I love Magical Realism anyway, and looking at American society and its collective psyche through that lens has proved to be especially revealing. No other movie came close to that kind of insight and originality.
I’m sorry Selma and Danny Oyelewo didn’t get nominated, and that women in Hollywood suffer pay discrimination, but at least the Oscars did get something right with Birdman.
After I saw the movie last October, it took me awhile to process. I think it might have helped me from the outset to know that it was written and directed from a Latin American perspective; once I knew that, it all came together… a truly remarkable film juxtaposing a deservedly caustic look at American stage method acting with an Americanized comic book cum paranormal magical realism.
I believe that magical realism is imprinted in the core of the Latin American psyche now, probably because of Garcia Marquez’ Hundred Years of Solitude; and it soars to great heights in this movie (pun intended)… while at the same time playing well to North American film sensibilities regarding the human emotional elements playing off ego and competition memes that help define our North American psyche.