Theft

Katherine Anne Porter's lead character in "Theft" has made a life of not being heard.  "She had been pleased with the bleak humility... which ordered the movements of her life without regard to her will in the matter." <1>  A splendid long sentence follows - fused with colons; a short paragraph really - expressing the character's sense of having been "robbed". Things, journeys, words, friendships and love: "all that she had had, and all that she had missed, were lost together, and were twice lost in the landslide of remembered losses."

II.

Humility is one thing.  Cowardice, another.  When her purse is stolen in the story, and she thinks she knows by whom, the woman's habit of mind is to let the matter pass, as "it would be impossible to get [the purse] back without a great deal of ridiculous excitement."  An "almost murderous anger" changes her mind, however.  She confronts the thief.

The lady is correct in her suspicions.  A janitor has indeed taken the purse.  But when the janitor explains her thieving, the woman is no longer so eager to getting the purse back.  The janitor tells her that she had taken the purse for her niece, who's of marriage age, and "'needs pretty things'".  The janitor's next words are piercing:  "'You're a grown woman, you've had your chance, you ought to know how it is!'" The woman has sought to make a virtue out of her negligent attitude to life.  Meanwhile, her losses have come to fester.  We might infer that this sharpens a rage within her, that "almost murderous anger".

What we mustn't neglect to also notice is that when the lady finally does choose a battle, it is with a janitor, a person below her in class and power position.  Porter bespeaks the political here, to relate the issues of agency and justice in modern society.    

III.

The lady in the subtle weave of "Theft" is unnamed by Katherine Anne Porter.  "I was right not to be afraid of any thief but myself, who will end by leaving me nothing."   A proper name, not least.
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<1>Porter, Katherine Anne. "Theft". The Norton Anthology Of Short Fiction, 1986.

Feathers Of A Birdman

There is a strut to the jazz drumming that occasionally keeps time with Michael Keaton in Birdman Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, 2014).  It's sly and playful. Maybe even a little rude; maybe a little embarrassing.  But mostly, it is confident and amused.  Appropriate, as Birdman is one funny strut of a film.

II.

Riggan Thomson (Keaton) used to play "Birdman" in a popular superhero film franchise.  But that was long ago.  Now, he is acting, directing, and become heavily invested in a contemporary Broadway version of a Raymond Carver short story.  Things aren't going as he might wish.

We have been introduced to the voice of Birdman, still in Riggan's head all these years later. In a gravelly tone, it mocks Thomson as a failure, fallen from his Birdman heights.  It derides everyone and everything around Thomson too, and the vituperation is often obscene and hilarious.

Riggan himself is contemptuous of the actor playing Ralph (Jeremy Shamos) in his play.  An injury from a falling light fixture soon removes the man from the production.  Thomson won't accept it as a chance accident, however.  He believes that he caused the light to fall where it did by the use of his old Birdman superpowers.

In steps Mike Shiner (Edward Norton), as replacement in the play. Shiner is an accomplished method actor, given to arrogant riffs of improvisation. His loose-cannon riffing seems to uncork the speecher in others.  Speeches are delivered offstage by the two female leads, Laura (Andrea Riseborough) and Lesley (Naomi Watts); by Riggan's daughter Samantha (Emma Stone); and with quiet venom, by the theatre critic Tabitha Dickinson (Lindsay Duncan).

All this holding forth by a bunch of high-strung self-dramatizers could easily become tiresome.  But the talent of these actors, led by an excellent Michael Keaton, allows them to chew their scenery and have it too.

III.

Inarritu's film is brash satire, punctuated now and again with a surreal image or turn of events.  Birdman has its serious thoughtful moments too, but ultimately remains comic, even or especially when it gets harder to keep laughing.