“Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Innocence)” Written and Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu

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Director:

Alejandro González Iñárritu (“Amores Perros”, “21 Grams”, “Babel”)

Main Cast:

Michael Keaton (“Clean and Sober”, Beetlejuice”, “Jackie Brown”)

Edward Norton (“Primal Fear”, The People vs. Larry Flynt”, “Fight Club”)

Emma Stone (“Superbad”, “Zombieland”, “The Help”)

Zack Galafianakis (“Into the Wild”, “The Hangover”, “Up in the Air”)

Naomi Watts (“Mullholland Drive”, “21 Grams”, “The Impossible”)

Running Time:  119 Minutes

______________________________________________________________

Wow, I don’t even know where to begin with this one.  My only familiarity with the film was from its trailers and a short article about how Michael Keaton was playing a actor who, like himself, had become a big star playing a superhero.  That was it.

I had mentioned in my review of “Interstellar” how the audience was never allowed to feel grounded once the mission started.  I also used the phrases “ambitious” and “break-neck pace.”  All of that goes double for “Birdman.”  The adjective that came to mind after I saw it was “modern” and the film is like a highly-charged hybrid between Federico Fellini and Michel Gondry.  It fuses the harsh, gritty reality of backstage Broadway with fantasy.  It features creative photography and visuals.  It’s shot to give the impression of one continuous take and there are no obvious edits.  The constantly moving camera gives it a realistic feel, almost like a documentary.  Scenes transition from one to another fluidly in momentum but abruptly in tone.  It bursts out of the starting blocks and never lets up.  I’d love to have been part of the pre-production of “Birdman”; I can only imagine people thinking “this can’t be done” every step of the way.  Whatever the process, the result is pretty amazing.

Riggan Thompson (Michael Keaton, right, with Edward Norton), a Hollywood actor ─ I mean “celebrity” ─ attained stardom as the lead in the blockbuster superhero Birdman trilogy decades prior.  In an attempt to validate and legitimize himself, he writes, directs, and stars in a Broadway stage adaptation of a Raymond Carver short story, dealing with crisis after crisis in getting the work onstage.  Most of the main characters have a neediness they are trying to fulfill.  Riggan needs to shake off the stigma of the character that made him a star, his daughter Sam (Emma Stone) is trying to find herself, battling drug addiction along the way.  Achieving her lifelong dream of starring on Broadway, Lesley (Naomi Watts), is consumed with doubt and insecurities and needs validation as an actress.  Talented but difficult actor Mike (talented and alledgedly difficult actor Edward Norton) steamrolls his way through his performances with a confidence he lacks off stage.  Jake (Zack Galifianakis), Riggan’s attorney, is constantly at his wit’s end and holds the production (and Riggan) together by fixing one world-ending problem after another.  That summary of “Birdman” does little to prepare you for the film itself.

Throughout the film, Riggan has an imaginary Jiminy Cricket in the form of his own Birdman character (an uncredited Benamin Kanes, left), who talks to Riggan in varying degrees of growls and roars.  We only hear his voice for the first part of the story and actually see him later in the film.  The Birdman sounding board represents Riggan’s own anger, arrogance, and bitterness, which are the flip side of his doubts, insecurities and the Birdman baggage he desperately wants to shake.

For me, “Birdman” is a welcome return for Keaton in a lead (and very intense) role in a major release.  This is the same guy who gave outstanding back-to-back 1988 performances in Glenn Gordon Caron’s “Clean and Sober” (for which he won the National Society of Film Critics Best Actor Award) and Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice.”  With his “Batman” background, Keaton couldn’t have been better cast and he runs with it with all pistons firing and seemingly without restraint.  Stone, Norton, Watts (Oscar®-nominated for Iñárritu’s 2003 “21 Grams”), Galifianakis, Amy Ryan and Andrea Riseborough in vibrant roles give great performances.  Given the storyline, direction, and Keaton’s powerhouse lead, all the actors could only have been inspired.  In both storyline and quality performances, this is very much an actor’s movie, although writer/director Iñárritu looms over the entire production.  Given his history of writing and directing intense, downward-spiraling movies, it’s a treat to see him successfully bring a comedic element to one of his films.  “Birdman” should appeal to Oscar voters and Iñárritu seems as certain a bet for at least one Oscar nomination as Keaton.

Between the characters, scenes, dialogue and pacing, “Birdman” moves so quickly and with such urgency it almost precludes the need for a music score.  The score is a simple one, jazz drummer Antonio Sanchez (left) not only composed it, but performs it solo and does so on camera in several scenes (hence the Fellini reference) in various locations.  As good scores do, this one augments and drives scenes.  I’m not even sure how accurate this comparison is but it made me think of Elmer Bernstein’s anarchic jazz-ish score from Alexander McKendrick’s 1957 “The Sweet Smell of Success.”  In both cases, the jazz score energizes the film and makes you take notice without distracting you from the story.

Despite Birdman’s stage production backdrop, I never once thought of movies with a similar setting, like Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s legendary 1950 “All About Eve” or Gregory La Cava’s 1937 “Stage Door.”  Nor did I think about the also-legendary 1950 Billy Wilder film “Sunset Blvd.”, which was also about a big film star trying to make a decades-later comeback.  I guess a film “Birdman” is most similar to in its setting is Tom DiCillo’s 1994 “Living in Oblivion”, which is about the drama, egos, and insecurities in making an independent film, but “Birdman” is much more modern, stylized, and amped-up and it adds the fantasy element.  The hallucinations (the costumed Birdman character and some of the film’s other surreal events, mostly manifestations of Riggan’s anger) are similar to those in Ron Howard’s 2001 “A Beautiful Mind” and Darren Aronofsky’s 2010 “Black Swan”, which was the film I thought of when I saw the trailer showing wings spreading behind Riggan as he was walking on the street.  “Birdman” also borrows a bit of the Charlie Kaufman psychosis of Spike Jonze’s 1999 “Being John Malkovich” and 2002 “Adaptation” and Gondry’s 2004 “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”

The film I thought of most when I left “Birdman” was Alfonso Cuaron’s 2013 “Gravity”, although I wasn’t sure why at the time.  One reason is that it flows as though it’s happening in real time (except for the amazing time-lapse shots) but the other and more significant reason is that the films share a cinematographer in Emmanuel Lubezki.  Lubezki won a well-deserved Oscar for “Gravity” and has to be considered a front-runner for the work he does here.  The challenges for the movies had to be very different, since “Gravity” was almost all blue-screening and special effects with the focus on one actor and “Birdman” uses actual locations and multiple characters.  For me to make the association between the two films without knowing they had the same director of photography shows how much Lubezki’s touch contributes to both films.*

Other than mentioning the graphic language (several older couples walked out of the theatre) and limited sexual content, this review should set you up to see a creative and  adrenaline-charged movie experience.  This may be premature because I have yet to see “Foxcatcher”, “The Theory of Everything”, and “The Imitation Game” but, if I had to choose only one new movie to see this year, “Birdman” would be it.

DPW

November 23, 2014

* Lubezki’s IMDB profile shows he was director of photography on Terrence Malick’s 2011 “The Tree of Life”, which defies and would be limited by categorization.  Nothing Malick, whose previous movies I found underwhelming, did prior would have led me to think he could direct a movie like that and I have to think a large part of the credit has to go to Lubezki.  If you go into the movie looking for a specific meaning, you’ll rob yourself of its point.

Even though the film’s title is officially “Birdman”, I chose the longer title for the review because one word is too simplistic for the movie.  What I don’t understand is why the word “or” isn’t included in the parentheses (look at the poster).

Added December 11, 2015:

I mentioned this is an actors movie on more than one level.  “Birdman” got SAG nominations in all movie acting categories except for Lead Actress, which the movie didn’t really have.  http://www.eonline.com/news/604452/sag-awards-2015-complete-list-of-nominations

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