Movie Review: Birdman

Birdman (2014)

Four and half Stars out of Five

R

Riggan Thomson: Michael Keaton

Sam Thomson: Emma Stone

Jake: Zach Galifianakis

Lesley Truman: Naomi Watts

Laura: Andrea Riseborough

Mike Shiner: Ed Norton

Sylvia Thomson: Amy Ryan

Tabitha: Lindsay Duncan

Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu

Writer: Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, and Armando Bo

Music: Antonio Sanchez

Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki

In 2006, Hollywood was the lucky beneficiary of three imports from Mexico. Alfonso Cuarón provided us with “Children of Men”, Guillermo del Toro with “Pan’s Labryrinth”, and Alejandro González Iñárritu with “Babel” – all four star or better films. Cuarón continued the Mexican momentum with “Gravity” in 2013 and now in 2014, Iñárritu has outdone them all with “Birdman”. This powerful influence from Mexico in the form of these three directors is notable, but is there an underlying theme to their artistic efforts; is there something like the Magical Realism that infuses South Americans Gabriel Garcia Márquez (Colombia) and Isabel Allende (Chile)? If there once was a unifying feature to the three Mexican directors, Iñárritu may have abandoned it in Birdman. This movie departs from the others as it fuses influences from the Theatre, from American Cinema, from contemporary American life, and, yes even from Magical Realism. It is a bravura effort notable for its artistic merits, though possibly lacking in some of the qualities that make American movies financial successes.

Like Orson Wells’ “Citizen Kane” (1941), Iñárritu has become with his cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezski a master of the long panning shot. Wells was a great innovator and his opening shot to Citizen Kane as the camera pans into Kane’s castle and into and through the building is justifiably famous. Iñárritu and Lubezki have instituted very similar techniques throughout “Birdman” as they fly from the opening scene in Riggan Thomson’s (Michael Keaton) dressing room to the cramped hallways of his off-Broadway theater and out into the world inhabited by Riggan. Additionally, Iñárritu has chosen to use another film style last seen in Joe Wright’s 2013 version of “Anna Karenina”. In that movie, Wright experimented with a technique wherein each scene within the movie blended and segued right into the next scene. This lends a sense of a single shot movie as well as a complete collapse of the time sequences within the movie to match those of real life; it gives the movie the feel of live action theater. To say that shooting and acting within such constraints must be especially difficult is clear, but to do it as seamlessly as Iñárritu and Lubezki do in “Birdman” is remarkable.

To help accentuate the theme and background scenery of off-Broadway plays, Iñárritu has also borrowed from the stage many of the acting techniques used in live productions. Each of the actors within “Birdman” are either shouting or at the very least speaking at the top of their voices. This lends a sense of the stage wherein the actors must project their voices to be heard, but it also refers to the near psychotic nature of the mind that resides within Riggan Thomson. Another aspect of his mental deterioration is punctuated by the driving drum rhythms heard in the movie’s score and even more highlighted by the claustrophobic nature of the dark hallways that line his theater. He is in a tight place fiscally, mentally and emotionally. He is emotionally cut off from or has cut himself off from everyone who loves him. He is a kind of bomb waiting to go off.

Riggan’s back story is that he is a former big star celebrity from Hollywood famous for making action/comic book movies featuring a flying character named Birdman. Riggan has moved to New York to open a play he has written; he will also direct and star in this play. This is ostensibly to re-start his career. He is supported by his lawyer and friend, Jake (Zach Galifianakis), his daughter Sam (Emma Stone), his girlfriend and fellow actor Laura (Andrea Riseborough), and yet one more actress Leslie (Naomi Watts). As he enters the final preparations for his play, he must find a new actor to replace one injured on stage. Leslie suggests her former boyfriend and Broadway phenomena Mike (Ed Norton). Mike joins the cast as the play moves through its three final warm up productions before the official opening. Mike is a brilliant but eccentric actor that brings more problems to the already troubled production. Meanwhile, Riggan’s mental condition is shown to be in a deteriorating situation. He talks to his imaginary alter ego Birdman. Despite being imaginary, Birdman being the comic hero argues against the artsy play and demands a return to Hollywood with its action-themed movies; that Birdman is actually Riggan’s lack of self-confidence made manifest is clear. It is also revealed that Riggan’s daughter is a former drug addict who suffered an unhappy childhood as a result of Riggan’s absences.

Iñárritu blends several themes into the movie. To help accent Riggan’s mental state he is shown to display the ability to levitate and use telekinesis while he is alone – always alone. Such abilities can be a kind of Magical Realism, but are really not so in the context of this movie, they are more a symptom of Riggan’s growing delusion. Even though he is widely recognized on the streets of New York for his Birdman role, Riggan seeks a rebirth via an artistic effort. He wants to be recognized as an actor. He thinks not being recognized as an artist, as anyone other than Birdman is the source of his problems. To make this point quite clear, he has an argument with an arrogant but influential theater critic, Tabitha (Lindsay Duncan). She forcefully explains to him that he is a celebrity and not an actor, and that she intends to pan his play so fiercely that it will close very quickly. Riggan comes back just as forcefully that she is no artist either, but simply someone that labels true artists; she is someone that cannot do, but can merely comment. Iñárritu’s comparison of art and celebrity, and even more effectively of the techniques of fantasy in a fictional life versus mental illness are two examples of the high level of art as practiced by him within this film.

Michael Keaton has like Iñárritu achieved a pinnacle in his own career within this movie. His acting life prior to "Birdman" was entertaining, but hardly of the serious artistic heights he demonstrates in this movie. Keaton smoothly moves from one mood to another, even from one personality to another multiple times during the course of the movie. He is morosely arguing with his Birdman legacy wishing for more, he is angrily arguing with a critic or destroying his dressing room, he is broadly smiling following some minor victory, or ultimately he is inwardly facing his reality while reassuring his daughter. Virtually every scene Keaton acts in, he aces with the perfection of the Broadway actor, his character Riggan yearns to be. That Keaton won the 2015 Oscar for Best Actor is no surprise, and an event that gives me some hope for the integrity of the Oscar nomination process. The movie is replete with excellent acting: Norton as Mike and Stone as Sam are two other standouts.

There are some problems within the movie. The three adult women that surround Riggan are so nearly interchangeable in terms of their near identically transparent personalities it is sometimes hard to tell them apart except by hair color or context. We can tell Sylvia is his ex-wife from their conversation, but the role of Sylvia is so truncated and her personality so absent within the story she is easily mixed up with the other blonde, Leslie. Leslie’s personality and that of Laura are nearly invisible. You can tell them apart by hair color but not by much else. To make matters even more obscure, Laura initiates a love scene with Leslie for no obvious reason in terms of the movie or their characters. The motivations and behaviors of these three female characters remain throughout the move quite a mystery. If they are in the movie to symbolize how invisible all the women in Riggan’s life are or have been to him, then that is a valid point; it is just not a point clearly made in the movie.

The much better defined character of Sam also has problems. She is yet another female left on the side of Riggan’s life due to the exigencies of his career in Hollywood. The problem with her character as shown in the movie is that her character is constantly changing. When she first appears in the movie, she is buying flowers for Riggan in her role as his personal assistant (the implications of this are clear – she is an assistant, not a loved daughter). Her affect is one of constant anger and agitation. As the movie progresses, so does her personality: angry to nihilistic to sympathetic to her father’s needs and situation to loving, even adoring of who her father is revealed to be. Such changes could occur in anyone, and indeed as Sam came to know her father and his personal demons better, this would have been a reasonable progression. But to have her change so in only a matter of days seems less than realistic. Emma Stone's acting for these various mood and attitude changes is spot on, but the character herself is problematic.

The sub-title to Birdman is “Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance”. It is referenced as a quote in the movie attributed to the theater critic, Tabitha. She uses it as a back handed compliment to Riggan following his play’s opening night. Her meaning is that despite not being a true artist, Riggan has nevertheless pulled off an unexpected coup with his play. Surely a second meaning could be a sly reference to Riggan’s personal life. He lived his career not his family life; as such he lost his wife Sylvia and is losing or has already lost his daughter. Too late he realizes these losses in a discussion with Sam late in the movie. This scene is there to justify Sam’s warming attitude towards Riggan as her father. And it does also seem to be a reference to how many people live their lives. Maybe reaching for stardom and its pointless celebrity or in the case of the average Joe working long hours to pay the rent and buy the food; but in the end losing what truly matters, the love of those you were trying to nurture and protect. Like the shallow Birdman character that lives in Riggan’s mind, bad choices are made, and Riggan/Birdman just wants to fly away from his problems and himself.

The movie ends with a scene of Sam looking out the window. This scene is both ambiguous and clever. On the one hand, the movie has portrayed Riggan’s mental unravelling in a manner that strongly suggests his levitation, telekinesis and Birdman conversations exist only in his mind. Everyone else in the movie lives with their feet firmly planted in the world we all live in. These people may be theater people, shouting out their lines or like Mike adhering to some extreme views on method acting (even as he hides his personal inadequacies, symbolized by his E.D.). But none of them could fly or hurl objects with the force of their minds. Such events were presented solely as examples of Riggan’s psychosis. And then at the movie’s end, we see Sam look out and down through a window, looking for her father. She does not seem to seem him on the ground, but then smiles as she looks skyward. Has Magical Realism now spread into the movie; is Riggan flying? Or has she seen him lying on the ground and then turned her eyes heavenward with assumption that her father is now finally happy? If the former, I really don’t see the point of the movie, but if the latter, that is has Sam and her father finally reconciled, then the movie has made its point. Riggan has regained the one thing that mattered; it wasn’t his fame, his psychotic belief in his ability to fly, his escape from his bills and harsh critics, it was the love of the one person whose love he must have.

This movie is a powerful one made by an artist who is at the top of his game. But the driving musical score, the cramped scenes, the extreme characters like Mike, will make this movie a hard one to please many movie goers. If you like exceptional acting, clever cinematic techniques, and want to see a complex story told in a complex manner, then “Birdman” may be for you.