Birdman Trailer
This is Where I Leave You Trailer
Beginners (2010) Trailer
I put these movies together because they all discuss the absurdity of life.
Each of these movies features a loser protagonist: in Birdman, Riggan who was once famous as a comic character Birdman is struggling to gain his fame back and is risking all his money to a new Broadway show "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love". The poor man suffers hallucination and his alter-ego Birdman annoys him a lot in his mind. In This is Where I Leave You, Judd loses his job and his wife after finding that his wife sleeps with his boss. Worst, his father died. In Beginners, Oliver's father died. He couldn't recover from the fact that his dad came out of the closet four years ago and had a young lover.
These movies talk about how the protagonists life sucks and how they struggle and deal with life.
I like the endings of these movies because they are all uplifting. In Birdman, Riggan tries to commit suicide but fails. He jumps out of the hospital window. His daughter looks out of the window, she looks down, finds nothing. And then she looks up, smiling. In This is Where I Leave You, Judd leaves his mum's home after resolving his personal problems. The sunshine in the ending scene shows that he is optimistic about his future. In Beginners, Oliver and Anna resume their relationship and they glance hopefully at each other.
Though these movies did not bring out a lot of meaning to life, they give a little bit of hope to the people who feel life's absurd and meaningless. Maybe life really is meaningless.