There has been much Oscar hype surrounding this film and interesting though the film is it is it isn’t that great.
Twenty years ago Riggan Thomas (Michael Keaton) was an A-list actor, starring as the comic book hero Birdman. And like all good comic book heroes Birdman could command mighty powers, destroy his enemies and fly above the flotsam of the dull dull world beneath him.
But now Riggan’s wings are clipped. He’s burned out, on the cusp of old age, and pretty much forgotten. Into this witches’ brew that age brings he is attempting a comeback by directing, writing and acting in a Broadway play based on a Raymond Carver story.
This too long (2 hours and it feels every minute of it) but exuberant film, cunningly edited to look as though it’s filmed in a single shot, takes place mainly backstage. As viewers we can barely catch our collective breath as arguments and accidents pile up on one another and threaten to destroy Riggan’s comeback.
Riggan’s goggle-eyed daughter (Emma Stone) works in the same theatre and is a recovering addict, the principle actor suffers an injury and is replaced by a monstrous narcissist (Edward Norton) who is intent on destroying the play and the other actors in it. Riggan’s lover (Andrea Riseborough) announces she is pregnant, and Naomi Watt’s is molested onstage by Norton, a method actor who takes things to extremes and uses a real pistol during the play with predictable results.
Given this maelstrom of events and the existential crisis he has created for himself, it’s also no surprise that Riggan is, or maybe isn’t, subject to fantasies. He too, like Birdman, flies upwards into the sky, moves objects and clicks his fingers and ignites fireballs. His anger explodes at every turn but what forces him onwards is the critical voice of Birdman in Riggan’s head.
Seemingly filmed in one-take the camera takes the viewer behind stage, into the street, to the theatre rooftop and onstage in a continual flow of images; manic and intense and totally irritating after just a few minutes when it upstages the content of the film. It also leads us to conflate and confuse reality with imagination (can Riggan really fly or he just a depressed fantasist?). As a method of illuminating the story it is useless and should have been dumped – on a cutting room table.
But there’s much to be said for Iñárritu’s film as well. I loved the splendid rumpus of backstage activity. It has energy and intelligence and throws a few spanners in the works; Riggan ends up, defiant and ridiculous in his underpants, striding (not flying) through Times Square. It’s salutary stuff – asking the big questions that Riggan, and by implication, the audience all deal with: what happens at the end of a career? What the heck, indeed, is it all for?
Predictably though we don’t get any answers from an actor whose identity as Birdman has been based on theatrical artifice and who is now trying to revive his career by taking on serious (real) theatre. Not surprisingly it all ends in farce.
Unlike Birdman, Keaton (who played Batman years ago) is benefitting from his high profile comeback and was nominated as best actor in a comedy at the Oscars. Birdman is all self-referential black comedy though. Don’t expect any laughs.