A movie that deserves the praise it’s getting, a near (and deserving) lock for Best Actor, Director, and Picture nominations. It gets you to think about Michael Keaton and formerly-too-somber director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu in a totally new way.
What Works: From a technical standpoint, “Birdman” is flawless, thanks to these flowing tracking shots famed cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki uses that make the film look like one long take. [He used a similar effect in the great film “Children of Men” and artfully disorienting camerawork in “Gravity,” both made by Inarritu’s old pal from Mexico City, Alfonso Cuaron.] This is the first time he’s worked with Inarritu, and it has a freeing impact on his style.
I’ve sometimes found Inarritu’s films to be swallowed whole by their own moroseness (before this he’s made something literally called “The Death Trilogy” and “Biutiful,” which was a bummer too, but not one backed up by substance). Here, he seems energized and invested in something besides beautiful suffering. He’s juggling a roving camera, rat-a-tat dialogue, a self-aware script, and the added dose of irony and uplift does wonders for him.
The entire cast is terrific (special props to Edward Norton as the type of famous Broadway actor less than 1% of America has ever heard of, but it doesn’t stop him for being an egomaniac anyway), but Keaton is a star reborn. Those of us who like Keaton have been waiting for twenty years for him to find the right role and seize back the spotlight, and he does so and then some here. For the first time, it feels like he’s holding nothing back, and the added vulnerability—-there’s no way to not see the position he’s in as identical to the character he’s playing: a movie star who’s never proved himself as a true actor but is no longer even a movie star—-makes you see him as if for the first time.
And a lot of films have tried to convey the battle for safe commercialism vs. creative art, but this might be the first one that shows that duel successfully. For once, what’s at stake doesn’t feel abstract. You truly get why Riggan is so desperate to prove he’s got the goods, and what it’ll mean if he can’t.
What Doesn’t: When you’re on a high this good, why complain that it wasn’t 5 percent as high as it could have been?
What I Would Have Done Differently: [See Above]