Birdman
(or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
(or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Cast: Michael Keaton, Edward Norton,
Naomi Watts, Zach Galifianakis, Emma Stone
Naomi Watts, Zach Galifianakis, Emma Stone
Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
It doesn’t happen too often in cinema, but occasionally a premise that is unique and enthralling, or featuring a pioneering visual approach, with stunning performances, comes out of nowhere and electrifies viewers – and indeed the harshest of critics. The latest cinematic attention-grabber is this - "Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)," a dark comedy full of surreal elements which features the aforementioned intriguing premise, a blistering visual approach and any number of attention-grabbing performances – most especially that of the quite brilliant Michael Keaton. It features some of the most undeniably bold, stylish and enormously entertaining filmmaking to hit cinema screens in a long time.
Keaton plays Riggan Thomas, an actor who became one of the biggest film stars in the world when he signed on to play the part of comic book superhero Birdman in an enormously successful film version and sequel, but who then rattled the industry by refusing to continue in the franchise with "Birdman 3." (Eerie echoes of a certain Caped Crusader?) His career hit the skids, and he has now flipped from Hollywood to Broadway in adapting, directing and starring in a stage production of a very serious Raymond Carver short story "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love." To do any one of those job successfully is a enormous enough challenge, but to attempt all three at the same time, in the midst of one's stage debut is pushing it more than a little.
Unsurprisingly, things are not going particularly well, with the show devouring all of Riggan's money, poor advance ticket sales, the final rehearsals are heading into chaos, and there is every reason to believe that the crucial drama critic from the New York Times (Lindsay Duncan) is preparing to annihilate the show in print, on the basis that she feels that it is a vanity project of a passed-his -sell-by date Hollywood loser using up valuable theatre stage space when‘real’ actors could be practicing their noble craft there, rather than it giving full rein to an inflated ego out of control. Added to this, we see Riggan literally floating in his dressing room, the initial example of extra-sensory powers he possesses along with the voices in his head.
Riggan finally gets a break when the second male lead is injured during a rehearsal and the other female co-star, Lesley (Naomi Watts), suggests that her roommate and lover, celebrated Method actor Mike Shiner (a superb turn from Edward Norton), is available to do the part. At first, it seems as if the arrival of Mike might save the day, as not only is he already off-book, but he has only been rehearsing with Riggan for a few seconds before making a handful of suggestions that even Riggan has to admit improve the scene considerably. Alas, whilst Mike is undeniably talented, it doesn't take too long for Riggan to realise that he is also off his chump and that his dedication to depicting absolute realism on the stage is so pronounced that he brings a preview performance to a destructive halt in mid-show upon finding out that someone has switched the real gin for water that he has been swilling on stage during a drunken scene. Riggan wants to fire him - but is informed by his increasingly beleaguered manager (Zach Galifianakis) that not only would this put him and the show in serious legal jeopardy, they cannot afford to let him go since the advance sale doubled in the hours after his participation was announced. As tensions with the show in general and Mike in particular increase exponentially, especially when his onstage antics anger his co-stars and his off-stage antics with Sam (Emma Stone), Riggan's ex-junkie daughter now unhappily working as his assistant, Riggan is on the verge of a complete nervous breakdown by the time opening night arrives and when it does, his own survival seems almost as much in doubt as that of his show. You may well be curious as to why I’m raving about "Birdman" - but director and co-writer Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, the Mexican filmmaker best known for such increasingly dour dramas as "Amores Perros," "21 Grams" and "Babel," has not just simply given us another extended in-joke that will amuse media and theatre types and those who want to at least feel as if they are in the know. Instead, he and co-writers Nicolas Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris and Armando Bo use Riggan's situation as a way to explore far more universal feelings of despair, alienation and the loss of control that will resonate just as strongly with people who have never once sat their nether regions on a seat in the stalls for a theatre performance.
Satire this may well be, but it is one that
manages to be both caustic and humane and it says more about the human
condition in more moving and thoughtful ways than Inarritu was able to
accomplish in more ostensibly serious-minded works like "21 Grams"
and the unbearable "Babel." In fact, I suspect that most people will
emerge from the film more moved by what they have seen than they could have
possibly anticipated. "Birdman" isn’t a
depressing experience because while it is examining the complexities of how we
function emotionally, it also tickles the funny bone and dazzles the eye with
some of the flashiest and most hilarious filmmaking to hit the screen in ages.
It does an amazing job of capturing both the chaos of putting on a show (the voice of experience here writing this!) in the face of one disaster after another (it takes the old joke about an actor being locked out of the theatre just before he is to go on and blows it up to epical and hysterically amusing proportions by having him both nearly naked and forced to walk through the heart of Times Square to get back inside) and the madness of a cultural moment in time when the greatest thing that a contemporary actor can aspire to these days is not a starring role on Broadway but a role in a comic book-inspired film franchise that requires them to parade around in daft costumes in exchange for tons of money. Never the most reticent of filmmakers, Inarritu pulls out all the stops here but for once, his flamboyant approach actually serves the story instead of merely interfering with it. As you may have heard, Inarritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki have elected to shoot the film in a manner that, thanks to a few nifty camera moves and surreptitious cuts by an outstanding editing team of Douglas Prise & Stephen Mirrione, it looks as though the entire feature has been filmed in one continuous take.
This may seem like just another empty gimmick as the story doesn't unfold in real time (it takes place over the course of a few days) but it proves to be an especially clever approach in that it not only helps to put us further into Riggan's fragmenting mind but the use of long takes and the absence of judicious editing helps to reinforce the notion that screen acting can, in its own way, be just as challenging and risky for its practitioners as what is done on the stage and their accomplishment can be just as significant.
As for the actors, they do their part to support this hypothesis by turning in a gallery of stellar performances that are all the more impressive for the technical obstacles that they needed to work around in order to get to those performances. As the Method-mad and just-plain-off-his-trolley actor who is seemingly convinced that all of his bad behaviour, on stage and off, is ultimately justified and accepted because of his prodigious talents, Edward Norton turns in arguably the loosest and most immediately entertaining performance that he has done since the glories of "Fight Club."
Working in a much less manic mode than usual, Zach Galifianakis gets a lot of big laughs as Riggan's increasingly stressed friend and manager (not necessarily in that order) who is trying desperately to keep things from completely falling apart. As the various women in Riggan's life and work, Watts, Stone, Riseborough (who is virtually unrecogniseable here) and Amy Ryan (as Riggan's ex-wife who only needs a few minutes back in his orbit to remember why she left him in the first place) all manage to carve out strong performances without getting subsumed by the chaos surrounding them. However, "Birdman" is ultimately Michael Keaton's moment in the sun, and he responds to the challenge of the best-ever showcase for his enormous talents with this knockout performance – easily the finest of his career.
Keaton is one of the few actors working today who can pull both outrageous comedy and serious drama. With "Birdman," he has found just that sort of role - one that allows him to display his skills with madcap comedy and powerful dramatics - and the result is a total triumph. This is not simply a case of an actor essentially playing himself - this is a performance as original and nuanced as any you have seen.
It does an amazing job of capturing both the chaos of putting on a show (the voice of experience here writing this!) in the face of one disaster after another (it takes the old joke about an actor being locked out of the theatre just before he is to go on and blows it up to epical and hysterically amusing proportions by having him both nearly naked and forced to walk through the heart of Times Square to get back inside) and the madness of a cultural moment in time when the greatest thing that a contemporary actor can aspire to these days is not a starring role on Broadway but a role in a comic book-inspired film franchise that requires them to parade around in daft costumes in exchange for tons of money. Never the most reticent of filmmakers, Inarritu pulls out all the stops here but for once, his flamboyant approach actually serves the story instead of merely interfering with it. As you may have heard, Inarritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki have elected to shoot the film in a manner that, thanks to a few nifty camera moves and surreptitious cuts by an outstanding editing team of Douglas Prise & Stephen Mirrione, it looks as though the entire feature has been filmed in one continuous take.
This may seem like just another empty gimmick as the story doesn't unfold in real time (it takes place over the course of a few days) but it proves to be an especially clever approach in that it not only helps to put us further into Riggan's fragmenting mind but the use of long takes and the absence of judicious editing helps to reinforce the notion that screen acting can, in its own way, be just as challenging and risky for its practitioners as what is done on the stage and their accomplishment can be just as significant.
As for the actors, they do their part to support this hypothesis by turning in a gallery of stellar performances that are all the more impressive for the technical obstacles that they needed to work around in order to get to those performances. As the Method-mad and just-plain-off-his-trolley actor who is seemingly convinced that all of his bad behaviour, on stage and off, is ultimately justified and accepted because of his prodigious talents, Edward Norton turns in arguably the loosest and most immediately entertaining performance that he has done since the glories of "Fight Club."
Working in a much less manic mode than usual, Zach Galifianakis gets a lot of big laughs as Riggan's increasingly stressed friend and manager (not necessarily in that order) who is trying desperately to keep things from completely falling apart. As the various women in Riggan's life and work, Watts, Stone, Riseborough (who is virtually unrecogniseable here) and Amy Ryan (as Riggan's ex-wife who only needs a few minutes back in his orbit to remember why she left him in the first place) all manage to carve out strong performances without getting subsumed by the chaos surrounding them. However, "Birdman" is ultimately Michael Keaton's moment in the sun, and he responds to the challenge of the best-ever showcase for his enormous talents with this knockout performance – easily the finest of his career.
Keaton is one of the few actors working today who can pull both outrageous comedy and serious drama. With "Birdman," he has found just that sort of role - one that allows him to display his skills with madcap comedy and powerful dramatics - and the result is a total triumph. This is not simply a case of an actor essentially playing himself - this is a performance as original and nuanced as any you have seen.
