Review: Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
A whopping achievement on all fronts, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) is a watershed in modern filmmaking for which hyperbole feels woefully inadequate. Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, whose previous works were sobersided dramas that bore their miseries like badges of honour, presents an existentialist comedy, backstage farce, showbiz satire, a commercial movie masquerading as an arthouse film, and also a love letter to a medium for which he seems to have found a renewed passion.
Birdman tracks Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton), a fading Hollywood star who gained popularity as a masked superhero named Birdman in a series of blockbuster films, as he stages his comeback in a self-financed Broadway production of Raymond Carver's short story "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love." He's striving to be credible, to shed the patina of popularity that has prevented critics and audiences from taking him seriously, and he's done everything to stack the deck in his favour: adapting and directing Carver's work to provide himself with two attention-getting monologues and surrounding himself with respected actresses - old friend Lesley (Naomi Watts, luminous) and lover Laura (Andrea Riseborough, fierce) - to make himself look better. The inclusion of Lesley's boyfriend Mike Shiner (Edward Norton) is both a blessing and a curse: brought in to replace a suddenly incapacitated actor, Mike's popularity bolsters ticket sales but the madness to his Method unnerves Riggan, who gets more than he bargained for when Mike demands rewrites, scuppers the first preview performance by imbibing real gin instead of water, and develops a flirtation with Sam (Emma Stone), Riggan's daughter who's recently finished a stint in rehab.
Having hired her as his personal assistant to lessen their estrangement, Riggan finds his insecurities exacerbated by her rants on everything from his vanity ("You're not doing this for the sake of art, you're doing this because you want to feel relevant again.") to his refusal to acknowledge and adapt to the cultural shift ("You hate bloggers, you mock Twitter, you don't even have a Facebook page. You're the one who doesn't exist."). The question of his existence is a weighty one for Riggan, who has had to take on several personas over the course of his career, and whose defining role as Birdman has led to a negation of his actual self. "I don't exist, I'm not even here," Riggan says in character at the end of the play's final act, but the words reverberate offstage. The specter of Birdman follows him everywhere, even manifesting itself as his nagging internal voice: "Without me, all that's left is a sad, mediocre actor grasping at the last vestiges of his career."
Keaton famously donned the mask of the Caped Crusader for Tim Burton's Batman duology and, while the film welcomes the parallel of real life to reel life, it's safe to say Keaton's credibility as an actor was already established before he became the Dark Knight, and that he delivered four of his best performances (The Paper, Multiplicity, Jackie Brown, and HBO's Live from Baghdad) after he walked away from the role. Yes, he's been lost in the Hollywood wasteland for more than a decade, but what a return to the fold! Keaton digs deep as Riggan, giving an exposed-nerve characterisation that lays bare all the self-hatred, neediness, vulnerability, and regret. It is the performance of his career.
Equally praiseworthy are the supporting players, with particular attention to Norton and Stone. Norton is a merry mischief-maker here, but also balances Mike's obnoxiousness with a weariness stemming from having to put on his own mask ("I pretend just about everywhere else, but not [onstage]."). Looking like an angry little bird, Stone spews and snarls with surprising ferocity but also unearths some lovely grace notes that often catch the breath.
Many a debate has raged over the comparable difficulties of stage versus screen acting, with theatrical performers given the edge since screen actors not only have the comfort of multiple takes but, more importantly, can have their performances enhanced or diminished in the editing room. Birdman's single-shot illusion approach deprives the actors of their usual safety nets, upping everyone's game in the process. They all deserve applause by virtue of surviving one of the most logistically complex films in cinematic history, with the camera snaking down narrow theater hallways, eavesdropping on one character before darting off to stalk another, journeying outside for a God's-eye view of the people below, and creeping close enough to see the blood pulse beneath the skin. Alfred Hitchcock and his crew (cinematographers Joseph A. Valentine and William V. Skall, editor William H. Zeigler) set the cinematic precedent with Rope, comprised of about a dozen long takes edited together to resemble one continuous shot. Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, no stranger to the art of a complicated long take (Children of Men, Gravity), surpasses himself with camerawork that manages to be controlled and spontaneous, lucid and surreal, and a genuinely harmonious communion between form and content. Not to be overlooked are editors Douglas Crise and Stephen Mirrione, who expertly maintain the illusion.
One could view Birdman as an admonishment of popular culture, which it very much is ("Popularity is the slutty cousin of prestige," Norton remarks at one point), yet it is also an embrace of it. Think of it as Iñárritu's Sullivan's Travels, Preston Sturges' masterwork centering on John L. Sullivan, a popular director of successful comedies. Keen on making a socially relevant drama, he disguises himself as a penniless hobo and mingles with the homeless to better understand the human condition. What he ultimately discovers, during a showing of Walt Disney's Playful Pluto at a labour camp, is laughter is as important as drama ("There's a lot to be said for making people laugh. Did you know that's all some people have?"). Iñárritu swaps out comedy for the superhero film - he and his fellow screenwriters Nicolas Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Jr., and Armando Bo even take time for a comic lament on how Michael Fassbender, Robert Downey, Jr., and Jeremy Renner have jumped on the comic book bandwagon - and arguably finds a place in his heart for the genre (Birdman, however it may classify itself, is very much an action film and a superhero movie as well).
"Give the people what they want," Birdman urges Riggan. There's nothing wrong with that, Sturges and Iñárritu would agree. You can give the people what they want, and sometimes you can even give them something they didn't even know they wanted. Bravo, Birdman.
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Directed by: Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Written by: Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Jr., Armando Bo
Starring: Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, Emma Stone, Zach Galifianakis, Naomi Watts, Andrea Riseborough, Amy Ryan
