The Birdcage
It’s easy to get caught up in the hilarity of Mike Nichols’s “The Birdcage” that one forgets how vital it was when it comes to the culture wars, and the burgeoning acceptance of homosexuality in the mainstream. For conservatives like Gene Hackman’s Senator Kevin Keeley, the film must have been a nightmare, showing a happy, affectionate gay household with no AIDS, a little bit of familial tension, but overall, things work out as two completely different cultures collide, and find common ground in young love.
A big part of the film’s ultimate success resides in Nathan Lane’s remarkably funny performance as Albert Goldman, the drag queen partner of Robin Williams’s Armand, who in this case, is our “straight man,” as it were. Yes, Cuba Gooding Jr. deserved his Oscar for “Jerry Maguire,” but rewatching “The Birdcage” again, I forgot how terrific Lane is. Yes, he’s hilarious, but there are also some real layers of depth in the character’s arc that Lane plays perfectly. When we first meet Albert, he’s hysterical with jealousy about Armand, who has a private dinner planned while Albert is on stage, but Albert has nothing to worry about; it’s just Armand’s son, Val (Dan Futterman), who wanted some alone time with his father. When Albert is in drama queen mode, Lane pitches everything up to 11, and it’s comedy gold watching Williams play the more subtle sides of a scene for once (although some passing jokes about suicide were a bit rough in light of his death recently). But Lane isn’t a one trick pony– as Val and Armand work to get things ready for a dinner with the politically conservative parents of Val’s fiancee Barbara (Calista Flockhart), Albert inadvertently uncovers lie upon lie as Armand and Val are convinced that having Albert around for the dinner is a disaster waiting to happen. This leads to some real emotional weight that Lane plays beautifully, giving resonance to the central tension about how Val and his real family feel like they need to pretend to be something they aren’t, just for the benefit of a good first impression. Admittedly, I never really gave Nichols and screenwriter Elaine May enough credit for what they did with this movie when it came out, but like so many films I saw in my early days of obsessing about movies, a second look now changes a lot.
I’ll admit to being pretty shocked myself with how casual Nichols and co. were with portraying homosexuality and the culture of South Beach, Florida (where the film takes place), but not in the sense of being offended by it. I think “The Birdcage,” based on a French play called “La Cage Aux Folles,” was the first R-rated comedy I had really seen (unless one counts “Pulp Fiction”), so it was pretty stunning to see all the male nudeness, and the almost matter-of-fact way the film threw out the word “fag” like it was going out of style. I think that, because I wasn’t quite prepared for how far the film seemed to go, and how much it got away with, it fell flatter with me than if I were watching it now for the first time. In terms of American cinema, it feels, upon rewatching, that “The Birdcage” was a significant moment in the acceptance of homosexuality not only as a breachable subject in mainstream film, but in the larger American culture, as well. (The success of the Broadway musical, “Rent,” at the same time no doubt helped.) This was a gigantic hit in 1996, in the early part of the year, and while that was due largely to the presence of Robin Williams, as well as a note-perfect supporting cast, I don’t think many people would have quite seen it as the slam dunk it was. But Williams was a special performer, and after he crossdressed in “Mrs. Doubtfire” a few years earlier, I think it’s safe to say he was someone we would watch in most anything if it was a comedy.
Williams may have been the main thing driving the movie on-screen, but off-screen, Mike Nichols is the person who brings it home. Few filmmakers have been able to move between comedy and drama with the ease and inventiveness as Nichols, who along with this film’s screenwriter (Elaine May), helped found the famed Second City improv theatre. This isn’t the last time you’ll be hearing about Nichols from me, especially since his next film after “The Birdcage” was one of the sharpest political movies of all-time (“Primary Colors,” also written by May). I still have yet to watch significant works such as “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” “Catch-22,” “Working Girl,” and “Angels in America,” but between this film, “Colors” and “The Graduate,” Nichols’s gifts as an incisive, witty storyteller with a gift for blending humor and humanity is already a given with me. That realization started with “The Birdcage,” and it holds up wonderfully as one of the director’s strongest, most inspired efforts.
