Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Birdman (or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) was nominated for nine Academy Awards and won four, including Best Director and Best Picture. It was written by Iñárritu, Nicolas Giocabone, Alexander Dinelaris, and Armando Bo. In the film, Michael Keaton plays Riggan Thomson, an actor who had stellar success over the course of three movies in which he starred as a superhero named Birdman. Those days of fame are long gone – 30 years gone – and Riggan is trying to turn his career around by directing, writing, producing, and starring in a Broadway play based on Raymond Carver’s short story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.”
Buy Birdman (or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) DVDRiggan’s producing partner, attorney, and best friend is Jake (Zach Galafianakis in an unusually controlled performance). The other actors in the play are Lesley (Naomi Watts), who is especially nervous because this is her Broadway debut; Laura (Andrea Riseborough), who is Riggan’s girlfriend and possibly pregnant; and Mike (Edward Norton), a very late replacement for an actor who was hurt during rehearsals. Riggan is also dealing with his adult daughter, Sam (Emma Stone), who he has hired as his reluctant personal assistant, and his ex-wife, Sylvia (Amy Ryan), who is loving and supportive, but glad to have moved on.
Through all this, Riggan is hearing the voice of Birdman, his most famous character, telling him to man up and force someone to produce Birdman 4. Riggan also appears to levitate during meditation. He moves objects with his mind. He sprouts wings and flies over the crowds of New York City. He is either going insane, or actually has super powers. Added to these pressures is that he runs into the most important theater critic at the local pub. She tells him that she will give his play a bad review no matter what, that she hates everything he stands for. Because of the plot and the casting of Michael Keaton, the audience is stuck thinking of Keaton’s work as the first major motion picture Batman and is left wondering where Keaton the man and Riggan the character bump up against each other.
Birdman wants to look like a movie shot in one continuous take, and, for the most part, it does feel that way. Some transitions between the long scenes are more awkward than others. However, the speed of the dialogue combined with the length of each moment gives the film the momentum of the inevitable; the sense that the outcome is unstoppable from the first scene. There is also the tension the audience feels as to whether or not Iñárritu can pull it off. He does, and rather brilliantly. The continuous storytelling keeps the actors looking frantic even when relaxed, and Keaton and Norton seem to especially shine under extreme pressure and lots of dialogue. Last, the “continuous take” gives Birdman the feel of a play within a play within the backstory of Riggan’s past as Birdman. The single take constantly adds complexity.
Birdman is a delightfully confounding movie. There is serious drama surrounding the opening of the play, and the comedy is pithy and fun. Its pacing is that of a bullet, and Keaton and Norton are tremendously smart and funny together. The only improvement would have been to let Keaton play himself; nothing in the script would contradict that change.
