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| Michael Keaton hovers over a side-street to Broadway in Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu's Birdman |
Birdman is the 5th feature by Mexican master director Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu (Babel (2006)). With it, he has taken a leap out of his usual niche, globalization-themed, fateful, powerful dramas, into something described as a dark comedy, but is more accurately a satirical dramedy (drama-comedy.)
Riggan is a Hollywood actor, who is trying to make a professional come-back by adapting, starring in and directing a Raymond Carver play on Broadway.
Michael Keaton (Beetlejuice (1988)) is a very hot ticket for his first Oscar for his performance as Riggan, (the title Birdman, who appears several times as the actor's alter ego/personified illusions of grandeur, is played by Benjamin Kanes (Piranha Sharks (2014)).) Although I personally like some of Keaton's other performances and films more, he gives it his all here. It just didn't get to me much, but I don't think it's his fault at all.
Zach Galifianakis (Due Date (2010)) has an unusually serious role here and does well with it. Emma Stone (The Help (2011)), who also, as a definite result of a streak of over-applause by the Academy, is nominated for her work in Birdman, plays Riggan's aggravating daughter. Finally, Edward Norton (Fight Club (1999)) riffs on his own image as a difficult primadonna as Riggan's new, difficult co-star.
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| Michael Keaton and Edward Norton in one of the funniest scenes in Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu's Birdman |
The details:
- There's quite a few laughs in the film, though they are, like the film as a whole, mostly cerebral, society-bashing, show-business-riffing cleverness, which never reached me at a gut level. That was a general problem for Birdman. Normally, this isn't for a comedy, because most comedies don't need you dramatically involved on a gut-level, but Iñárritu's fierce, dramatic ambitions of almost endless intensity throughout does beckon that we are transferred into Riggan's world on a gut-level. - Which he has accomplished better previously, most accomplished in Babel, but also in the great films 21 Grams (2003) and Biutiful (2010).
Birdman is accompanied by an experimental jazz score, and the film is presented as one uninterrupted long take, (the work of Mexican sorcerer/cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (Gravity (2013)), - also likely to win his then second Oscar for his work in Birdman. It is clear that Iñárritu was going for an eclectic, New York-pulsating, vivid, wild, urban feel with these choices, as with the slightly pompous opening titles and quote. It all made me and many other audiences have sweaty hand palms and arm pits for large portions of the film. Its style almost denies you being comfortable.
I, personally, had some difficulty with some of the other female characters in Riggan's life, (minus also Naomi Watts (21 Grams): Telling them apart and remembering their places in his life seemed to me to have been made unnecessarily convoluted.
Birdman is undeniably clever, - maybe a bit too much so for my taste. Although I did enjoy it, it left my system quickly afterwards, unlike the director's better films, and I must say that I am hoping for something more from Iñárritu's coming western The Revenant (2015).
Just about everyone are raving about 9 time (!) Oscar-nominated Birdman right now, - not few of them, I suspect, because they feel obligated to follow the crowds and do so.
Related reviews:
Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu: Biutiful (2010) - Sad globalization stories from Iñárritu
Babel (2006) or, Everyone's Connnected
21 Grams (2003) or, Hardcore Life
Amores Perros/Love Is a Bitch (2000) or, People = Bad, Dogs = Good
Watch the trailer here
Cost: 18-22 mil. $
Box office: 42.4 mil. $ (and counting)
= Too early to say (still in cinemas in many countries, and many premieres still pending)
What do you think of Birdman?
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