Gotham City has been portrayed in films and television many times since the first Batman serial was released back in 1943, so you'd think that town would have worn out its welcome by now. But Birds of Prey takes great pains to remind us that today's cities are more than just bloated villages; they're multicultural microcosms. Most depictions of Gotham make it look like Manhattan (specifically, as comic book editor Dennis O'Neil put it, Lower Manhattan around midnight on the coldest night of November), but here Bruce Wayne's hometown smacks a lot more of Brooklyn, and 21st-century Brooklyn in particular (especially ironic since this movie was filmed entirely in Southern California). Harley lives in a hipster's paradise where you never know just what you might see (or what you might eat, since Harley is very fond of food, and particularly ethnic food). Everything looks like a carnival, and that's before we get to the Joker's former amusement park hideout. Not only does the location make a very fitting dwelling for the story's unapologetically bohemian characters, but in an odd way it brings a dash of realism to what is otherwise a fantastic tale. Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher constructed Gothams composed of what were basically glorified cardboard cutouts, while Christopher Nolan depicted a sterile and anonymous world where technology seemed to have utterly triumphed.
But of course, the location is only half the setting; the staging is equally important. And what a stage we have here! All comic book movies contain at least a hint of the absurd, but Birds of Prey makes all of them look downright tame by comparison. I would say that watching it is like looking at the world through the eyes of the Joker, but then I remember that the Joker is even crazier than what's depicted here! But after all, Harley Quinn has been the Joker's disciple, and he certainly instilled her with a sense of wildly imaginative wonder in addition to all his other wacked-out sensibilities. Harley is a most audacious graffiti artist, and what a joy it is to watch her literally use the movie screen as her canvas! (Remember all those Day-Glo doodles in Suicide Squad? Here the entire movie is like that.) I think that's actually the key to Harley's appeal: there is plenty of innocence mixed in with her cynicism and coarseness, not to mention an inborn penchant for everything bizarre and outrageous. Compute all those factors and you get precisely what Birds of Prey is: an ultraviolent and very contemporary urban crime drama that often looks more like a classic Tex Avery cartoon. We all come to see the dark side of life at some point, but that doesn't necessarily mean we grow up.
Oh, yes - the violence. It is with only slight exaggeration that I dub Birds of Prey possibly the most violent movie I have ever seen (including all the horror films). Quentin Tarantino and Zack Snyder may have raised "violence porn" to the level of high art, but when it comes to sheer spectacle neither of them can match what director Cathy Yan has crafted here. Harley is such a terror with her "confetti gun" that you're almost left wondering whether Al-Qaeda just created a "circus" division, and she strikes grown men with her "Itchy & Scratchy"-style mallet viciously enough to crack jaws and break bones. (Home Alone burglars Harry and Marv were very lucky that they picked the McAllister residence and not the Quinn residence.) As if that weren't memorable enough, we also see the assassin Helena Bertinelli (also known as "The Huntress") using her crossbow to shoot people in the throat! And of course, how could I neglect to mention the scene of a runaway truck smashing into a chemical plant and causing it to explode in a cataclysm of neon-colored vapor? In the shadow of all that, the villain's nasty habit of slicing off the faces of his torture victims is almost forgettable.
Many people have said - almost to the point that it's become a cliché by now - that Birds of Prey is "feminazi," or "anti-man," or something similar. Considering how far afield our American culture has drifted, I find an issue like that almost trivial. Anyway, Birds of Prey, with its more heteronormative take on gender roles than we often see in the junk culture (one character is a lesbian, but that almost never comes up), is much less offensive to me than many of the "girl-power" farces I grew up watching. I need only mention Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where a girl grows up to become the deadliest fighter in the world despite having spent her youth in privileged sloth. But that wouldn't include the countless cookie-cutter heroines who thrived irrespective of Buffy - ladies who were able to effortlessly kick you-know-what because, well, they were women, and to dispute that point was to reveal yourself to be sexist. Birds of Prey, on the other hand, is more grounded in reality in the sense that it acknowledges that gender difference does matter: not only do all the heroines dress in basically masculine attire when they're out doing hyper-macho things, but the cutesy-wutesy Harley is more a cheerleader than a star athlete; and in comparison to the other Birds, her martial arts skills are lackluster and would not serve her well if she did not have one of her trademark Joker-style gag weapons in her hands (aside from the fact that she also somehow knows some professional wrestling moves, because ha-ha, comedy).
And that point brings me to the one ideological sweet spot that Birds of Prey hits right on the bull's-eye: despite its diverse cast and its message of female empowerment, the movie goes beyond psychosocial realism and straight to unvarnished emotional authenticity, thus becoming unabashedly politically incorrect. The humor is wacky, but it articulates a sort of antic disgust with the "conventional" world and especially with sociocultural pieties of all varieties. Harley Quinn may be a sociopath, but at least she's fair and rational, hating everyone pretty much equally and making the point that every single human being is a piece of scum at some point. In the course of reflecting on this movie, I'm reminded - fittingly enough - of last fall's Joker, wherein the Joaquin Phoenix incarnation of the character spewed misanthropic rhetoric with an absurdly ironic grin (definitely an improvement over Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger, and Jared Leto, all of whom colorlessly drawled anarchic wisdom with the glibness of a Zen master). But whereas Phoenix's take on the Clown Prince of Crime was deadly serious behind the obscenity, Margot Robbie's Clown Princess manages to channel her rage into jolly camp. That's probably the one thing about Birds of Prey that most appeals to me: for all its flaws, it manages to tell a tale about Gotham every bit as bleak as Burton's in a way that leaves you feeling almost as if you've just watched a marathon of Adam West's Batman. By the time the Picasso-inspired end credits sequence rolls, you're joyously drained.
But of course, the location is only half the setting; the staging is equally important. And what a stage we have here! All comic book movies contain at least a hint of the absurd, but Birds of Prey makes all of them look downright tame by comparison. I would say that watching it is like looking at the world through the eyes of the Joker, but then I remember that the Joker is even crazier than what's depicted here! But after all, Harley Quinn has been the Joker's disciple, and he certainly instilled her with a sense of wildly imaginative wonder in addition to all his other wacked-out sensibilities. Harley is a most audacious graffiti artist, and what a joy it is to watch her literally use the movie screen as her canvas! (Remember all those Day-Glo doodles in Suicide Squad? Here the entire movie is like that.) I think that's actually the key to Harley's appeal: there is plenty of innocence mixed in with her cynicism and coarseness, not to mention an inborn penchant for everything bizarre and outrageous. Compute all those factors and you get precisely what Birds of Prey is: an ultraviolent and very contemporary urban crime drama that often looks more like a classic Tex Avery cartoon. We all come to see the dark side of life at some point, but that doesn't necessarily mean we grow up.
Oh, yes - the violence. It is with only slight exaggeration that I dub Birds of Prey possibly the most violent movie I have ever seen (including all the horror films). Quentin Tarantino and Zack Snyder may have raised "violence porn" to the level of high art, but when it comes to sheer spectacle neither of them can match what director Cathy Yan has crafted here. Harley is such a terror with her "confetti gun" that you're almost left wondering whether Al-Qaeda just created a "circus" division, and she strikes grown men with her "Itchy & Scratchy"-style mallet viciously enough to crack jaws and break bones. (Home Alone burglars Harry and Marv were very lucky that they picked the McAllister residence and not the Quinn residence.) As if that weren't memorable enough, we also see the assassin Helena Bertinelli (also known as "The Huntress") using her crossbow to shoot people in the throat! And of course, how could I neglect to mention the scene of a runaway truck smashing into a chemical plant and causing it to explode in a cataclysm of neon-colored vapor? In the shadow of all that, the villain's nasty habit of slicing off the faces of his torture victims is almost forgettable.
Many people have said - almost to the point that it's become a cliché by now - that Birds of Prey is "feminazi," or "anti-man," or something similar. Considering how far afield our American culture has drifted, I find an issue like that almost trivial. Anyway, Birds of Prey, with its more heteronormative take on gender roles than we often see in the junk culture (one character is a lesbian, but that almost never comes up), is much less offensive to me than many of the "girl-power" farces I grew up watching. I need only mention Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where a girl grows up to become the deadliest fighter in the world despite having spent her youth in privileged sloth. But that wouldn't include the countless cookie-cutter heroines who thrived irrespective of Buffy - ladies who were able to effortlessly kick you-know-what because, well, they were women, and to dispute that point was to reveal yourself to be sexist. Birds of Prey, on the other hand, is more grounded in reality in the sense that it acknowledges that gender difference does matter: not only do all the heroines dress in basically masculine attire when they're out doing hyper-macho things, but the cutesy-wutesy Harley is more a cheerleader than a star athlete; and in comparison to the other Birds, her martial arts skills are lackluster and would not serve her well if she did not have one of her trademark Joker-style gag weapons in her hands (aside from the fact that she also somehow knows some professional wrestling moves, because ha-ha, comedy).
And that point brings me to the one ideological sweet spot that Birds of Prey hits right on the bull's-eye: despite its diverse cast and its message of female empowerment, the movie goes beyond psychosocial realism and straight to unvarnished emotional authenticity, thus becoming unabashedly politically incorrect. The humor is wacky, but it articulates a sort of antic disgust with the "conventional" world and especially with sociocultural pieties of all varieties. Harley Quinn may be a sociopath, but at least she's fair and rational, hating everyone pretty much equally and making the point that every single human being is a piece of scum at some point. In the course of reflecting on this movie, I'm reminded - fittingly enough - of last fall's Joker, wherein the Joaquin Phoenix incarnation of the character spewed misanthropic rhetoric with an absurdly ironic grin (definitely an improvement over Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger, and Jared Leto, all of whom colorlessly drawled anarchic wisdom with the glibness of a Zen master). But whereas Phoenix's take on the Clown Prince of Crime was deadly serious behind the obscenity, Margot Robbie's Clown Princess manages to channel her rage into jolly camp. That's probably the one thing about Birds of Prey that most appeals to me: for all its flaws, it manages to tell a tale about Gotham every bit as bleak as Burton's in a way that leaves you feeling almost as if you've just watched a marathon of Adam West's Batman. By the time the Picasso-inspired end credits sequence rolls, you're joyously drained.