<버드맨>의 마술적 사실주의: Arena와 Mask(Persona), 그리고 롱테이크

Abstract

Magical realism, bloomed in Latin America, has developed as one of cultural styles, expanding the influence in literatures, arts, motion pictures over the world. It contains fantastical components, which are understandably accepted by people with communal histories and values. As what Garcia Marquez and Alejo Carpentier contended, the primary goal of those fantastic settings in the narrative is to help people grasp the theme of story, find the 'marvelous reality' in their world, and ultimately explore the right language for description. Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)(2014) creatively applies the styles of magical realism to its storytelling. This study focuses on researching ways of using fantastic elements, of representing reality as the dramatic device of 'mask(persona)' and 'mirror', the specific space of 'New York', and the special storytelling art of 'hand-held long take with steady camera', in Birdman. Birdman takes 'hand-held long take' to capture a graphical daily life in our world, especially, the continuity of time and space, and to encourage audiences to face a real world for discovering the moment of 'marvelous reality'. And at 'St. James theater' in New York, 'the comprehensive world', composed of diverse races from various cultural backgrounds and financial status, which reflects two different worlds(a fictional world with masked actors and a real one with ordinary people), Riggan has wandered between himself and his persona(Birdman). Those worlds are shown contrasted, connected and sometimes mixed one another, through the various types of mirrors, which are one of features of magical realism. The ways of magical realism in Birdman function to describe a portrait of ourselves to approach pure desires under trials and errors by searching the 'marvelous reality' around.