COUNT André de la Roche and his American-born wife Jenny are once again glad to be surrounded by friends. It happens to be the first day of spring, though Paris has remained desolately grey and freezing. Indifferent to the ban on burning wood, logs are crackling and blazing with revengeful vigour in the fireplace.

For the occasion Jenny has chosen the screening of Birdman which won Oscars for best film, best direction and best screenplay.

After the show we contribute our comments over a round of aperitifs, though listening for two hours to four-letter expletives was an ordeal. The golden retriever Schweppes, who also watched the film sitting by the fireplace, appears undisturbed.

Louis d’Orgesson, an authority on cinema, clears his throat and speaks first: “The full title, Birdman, The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance, sounds terribly intellectual, but all we see here are morose banalities, computerized camera tricks and insupportable facial tics by the main character.”

“The idea of an ageing actor haunted by his former glory could have been good intellectual material,” says Jean Lauvergeat, the journalist, “but seeing him swearing and cursing, levitating in the air, crashing objects on the floor by long-distance gestures and flying over the streets of New York is irritating.”

Jean’s wife Edith joins in: “My idea of an intellectual film are works like Mike Nichols’ 1966 classic Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf, or All about Eve, the 1950 film by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, or, let’s say Becket, the 1964 chef d’oeuvre by Peter Glenneville, or, allow me to add, practically all the films by Satyajit Ray, Federico Fellini or David Lean. But what is Birdman?”

Louis d’Orgesson comes back: “I’ve read a great deal in the press about Birdman being an original idea, and that’s what the director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu wants us to believe.

“I keep thinking of A Double Life, directed by George Cukor in 1947 for which Ronald Colman was awarded a well-deserved best actor Oscar. Here, a Shakespearean player is obsessed by the character of Othello that he performs on the stage. The sequence of Othello strangling Desdemona is repeated many times in the movie, at one point the actor almost killing the actress. In the final scene he carries a real dagger and fatally stabs himself.

“Inarritu’s pitiful plagiary has nothing of the inventiveness of A Double Life, but that doesn’t stop him from repeating that scene again and again in Birdman, complete with lightening, thunderclaps and knocks on the door. Instead of stabbing though, the modern character shoots himself!”

André, who has been quiet so far, speaks: “I’d like to add Billy Wilder, Jean Renoir, John Ford, Otto Preminger and Akira Kurosawa to Edith’s list; but to come back to Birdman, there are things I just don’t understand.

“Throughout the film we see him smoking, once even a marijuana cigarette, inside the theatre. Why should he go out the backdoor to smoke when about thirty seconds are left to the drop scene? Then he barges in through the main entrance in underwear. Isn’t that rather artificial?

“We see him putting a revolver to his temple and pulling the trigger. At the end of the film he peels bandages off a swollen nose, steps out the window and starts flying. Very intellectual indeed, but does it…”

André is cut short by Schweppes who suddenly gets up, looks at us in turns, growls deeply, barks thrice, turns around and leaves the room.

“Now, what could he be talking about?”

“I know what he means,” says Jenny seriously. “He thinks you people are getting old. The world is changing. Anyone who owns a smartphone can be a film director. The days of people reading Greek philosophers to become intellectuals are over. All you need for that are Facebook and Twitter.”

The writer is a journalist based in Paris. ZafMasud@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, March 29th, 2015

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