Director Alejandro Innaritu’s film is presented in a very stylized manner. There are scenes where the central character, Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton), does fantastic things that will make viewers wonder if they are real or just a manifestation of Riggan’s unstable mind. Let’s just remind you that the film’s subtitle is “The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance”, so we’ll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions.
Riggan used to be a big movie actor because of the success of his superhero film franchise, “Birdman”. He now wants to make a comeback as a serious theatre actor in Broadway, via a play based on a Raymond Carver short story he himself wrote and is now also directing. As the play’s opening day nears, Riggan is very tense. Working with him is an actress friend Lesley (Naomi Watts), who’s excited to act on Broadway for the first time; Mike (Edward Norton), an acclaimed actor who’s noted for upstaging his co-stars; and his girlfriend, Laura (Andrea Riseborough), who thought she’s pregnant but turned out to be not.
Also involved are Sam (Emma Stone), Riggan’s daughter who just got out of rehab, and Brandon (Zach Galifiniakis), his manager-producer who’s helping him to get things together. There’s also theater critic (Lindsay Duncan) who is eager to tear Riggan into pieces. The best thing about the movie is the uniformly outstanding ensemble acting. Everyone, and we repeat, everyone, is good, contributing great stuff to the overall impact of the film, so it’s not surprising that they won the Screen Actors Guild award for best ensemble acting. Keaton is our bet as best actor in the coming Oscars. At 63 and being a former “Batman”, he fits the role perfectly and delivers the performance of a lifetime.
Inarritu has always been an inventive director, as seen in his past works like “21 Grams” and “Babel”. Here, he uses the camera to mount scenes in single unbroken takes (tuhog in local parlance), with the camera following characters through small corridors and alleyways and even outside in Times Square. The thought-provoking film pokes fun at cinema as a medium reeking with commercialism, compared to theatre, which is more artistic. There are even scenes where he makes fun of alien, monster and superhero movies. He also skewers theatre critics who are so full of themselves.
There are times when the movie gets to be quite pretentious and you can see its excesses (like the girl to girl kissing scene) in the director’s self indulgence, but the cumulative effect is still so compelling, punctuated by some truly hilarious moments. The best example is Michael Keaton being forced to walk through Times Square in his briefs as the camera follows him after a freak accident that leaves him naked at the artists entrance door. Most Oscar voters will be more charmed by Eddie Redymane’s heartbreaking portrayal of scientist Stephen Hawking in ‘The Theory of Everything’ and yes, he so damn good, but in ‘Birdman’, Keaton soars higher in a much more complex and difficult role.
