Birdman: He’s not just a lawyer anymore. It’s not Michael Keaton either. In Julia Jackman’s “100 Nights of Hero”, he is the god who imposed a sexist and homophobic order on humanity, because he had nothing better to do with his time. Everything was fine, Jackman’s film reveals, until a powerful white guy decided that women and homosexuality were bad because it made him feel better. I guess he also enforced all the racism, but “100 Nights of Hero” doesn’t really focus on that.
“100 Nights of Hero” tells the story of a young woman, Cherry (Maika Monroe), who marries a man, Jerome (Amir El-Masry), as she was supposed to. But it’s been a while and she’s still not pregnant. If she doesn’t have a baby soon, she will be executed, because Birdman orders it. And it can’t be Jerome’s fault, even if he refuses to consummate their marriage and it’s literally all his fault.
Enter Manfred (Nicholas Galitzine), the beef gadabout. He offers Jérôme a bet: Jérôme goes away for a hundred nights while Manfred stays at home to try to seduce Cherry. If Manfred fails to seduce her, Jerome wins and his wife will be executed for not becoming pregnant. If Cherry has sex, Manfred wins and he gets the deed to Jerome’s castle. And also Jerome’s wife will be executed for infidelity.
Needless to say, that’s not a good deal for Cherry, who only has one person at her side, a servant named Hero (Emma Corrin). They are… best friends. You have to add a pause between “They are” and “best friends,” because the movie literally does it. Really good… friends, that’s what they are. Roommates. Roommates for life. Very straight roommates. And… friends.
Cherry doesn’t know that Hero is in love with her, or that she is in love with Hero, or that women are even allowed to love each other (although legally, Birdman forbids it). Then Manfred appears, shirtless, covered in the blood of a moose that he has probably just killed with his bare hands. He wants to meet Cherry’s… needs. Oh my God. Cherry needs rescuing, so Hero formulates a plan: every time Manfred gets arrogant, Cherry hears Hero tell a story to block his… insolence.
Hero’s story is a cautionary tale about Rosa (Charlie Hero’s story is a powerful metaphor, even if it’s a bit thin on a narrative level, so it’s hard to imagine it will take 100 nights to tell – unless Hero’s prose is so purple it makes Prince jealous.
Jackman’s world is very decent, which only draws attention to its stupidity. Naming God as we know the concept “Birdman” and dressing his followers in silly bird masks doesn’t make it any less horrible when they sentence women and gays to death for arbitrary reasons. But it reminds us that everyone who does this in the real world is just as much a clown and that no one should take their stupid, bad ideas seriously. And even less transform them into laws or dogmas. (Sorry, I mean “birdma.”)
Adapted from Isabel Greenberg’s graphic novel, Jackman’s artifice goes some way to hiding “100 Nights of Hero’s” sometimes shaky production values. They filmed over a wide area, but the overall aesthetic had more in common with local arthouse theater, and that sometimes amplified the fable nature of the story. Many performances are mannered and stiff, but characters who are free from oppression — or at least, live and think as if they are — seem more comfortable in their own skin. To live in a repressed world is to live falsely, according to Jackman’s film.
As intentional as this may be, the essential quality of “100 Nights of Hero,” from the costumes to the performances to the story itself, emphasizes the film’s strengths and becomes a minor distraction. On the one hand, it seems like a Chaucer story, albeit a modern one, that touches on topics that even Chaucer would have struggled with. On the other hand, arch is still arch, so it may be difficult for some audiences to appreciate Jackman’s wavelength.
Is this kitsch just a metaphor for half-lived loves under illogical laws, or is it just a lot of kitsch? This appears to be the former, but if you can’t get past all the mannerisms, and there are certainly plenty of them, it can feel like a low-budget, very strange Wes Anderson riff. Not that it’s a terrible argument, but it’s still reductive, and “100 Nights of Hero” tries — with modest success — to get at something much deeper, about how stories inspire us to imagine better lives for ourselves. And if we can’t live these lives, at least our stories can inspire others. This is a wonderful message, largely delivered.
