If a benevolent genie would ask me whether I'd prefer being famous and penniless, or being filthy rich and anonymous, I'd take the money and disappear on a tropical island so fast that your head would spin. Then I'd probably spend the rest of my days trying to cheat on my agreement by writing novels that I'd wish would be important to people. Fame's a tricky thing, because it's a byproduct of living a life that it meaningful to others, and it's the only human pursuit that I can think of, that trumps financial power and freedom. BIRDMAN is a movie that brilliantly addresses the relationship to fame of actors, one of the two most iconic professions in our society, people who earn their living being someone else, and who can't figure who they want to be reminded as.
Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) found success in the early 1990s in Hollywood playing Birdman, an iconic masked superhero that brought him instant fame and recognition. The part never brought him satisfaction though, so he dropped it before the fourth installment of the movie. Fast forward two decades, his career never really recovered and Riggan finds himself in New York, trying to reignite his career on Broadway with a stage adaptation of Raymond Carver's WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LOVE short story. The entire meaning of Riggan's existence hanging in the balance, every doubt and fear eating away at him take spectacular, almost mythical proportion and his life takes quite the abstract turn.
BIRDMAN is, first and foremost, a technically impressive movie. There's no way around it, as Alejando Gonzalez Inarritu's direction is as much as character of the movie as Michael Keaton or Edward Norton are. The single take aesthetic * carried the magic realism aspect of BIRDMAN admirably well, as days blend into nights and that since the frame became the inescapable reality of the characters, whatever popped into it came in like a complete surprise. The unpredictability of this movie came from the direction as much as it came from the ambitious screenplay or from the inspired play of the actors. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, who became famous for filming the most gripping bummers in cinema, has directed one of the most original widely distributed movies in memory.
* Which I believe to be a gimmick, you can't shoot a single take over several days. No way.
Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) found success in the early 1990s in Hollywood playing Birdman, an iconic masked superhero that brought him instant fame and recognition. The part never brought him satisfaction though, so he dropped it before the fourth installment of the movie. Fast forward two decades, his career never really recovered and Riggan finds himself in New York, trying to reignite his career on Broadway with a stage adaptation of Raymond Carver's WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LOVE short story. The entire meaning of Riggan's existence hanging in the balance, every doubt and fear eating away at him take spectacular, almost mythical proportion and his life takes quite the abstract turn.
BIRDMAN is, first and foremost, a technically impressive movie. There's no way around it, as Alejando Gonzalez Inarritu's direction is as much as character of the movie as Michael Keaton or Edward Norton are. The single take aesthetic * carried the magic realism aspect of BIRDMAN admirably well, as days blend into nights and that since the frame became the inescapable reality of the characters, whatever popped into it came in like a complete surprise. The unpredictability of this movie came from the direction as much as it came from the ambitious screenplay or from the inspired play of the actors. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, who became famous for filming the most gripping bummers in cinema, has directed one of the most original widely distributed movies in memory.
An underrated moment in magic realism.
The most interesting idea in BIRDMAN, I thought, was that the main character Riggan Thomson is actually haunted by the voice of his character, and performs levitation and telekinesis when nobody else is looking. He is a different person than his character (they both appear on screen at times), and yet he's forever Birdman to a point he internalized his power. BIRDMAN courageously tries to solved the oldest artistic conundrum of: how can one be remembered for who he is and for what he does both? Riggan is directing, producing and starring in the Carver adaptation, because he wants to be remembered for something that is actually meaningful to him, which is probably the most difficult artistic crusade there is and BIRDMAN does a good job at humanizing both the job of acting (through several wonderful performances) and the abstract pursuit of immortality through art.
So, is BIRDMAN a good movie?
I'd say so. It's a very reflexive and cerebral movie about art, but it's been written and conceptualized with a hilarious metafictional double-entendre. The cast of Michael Keaton, an actor mostly identified as the first Batman on the silver screen, is no coincidence. The screenplay of BIRDMAN itself is an aggressive take on the pitfalls of trading artistic integrity for mainstream success. So yeah, it's a loaded and conceptually complicated movie, and it might seem strange coming from a director like Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, but it doesn't change the fact that it's a fun, ambitious, intense and beautiful movie. I'd say BIRDMAN's a pretty darn good movie indeed. It's heavy and involving, but it's worth investing the time. Maybe more than once even. It's a movie that has strong resonance.
* Which I believe to be a gimmick, you can't shoot a single take over several days. No way.