How did we end up here? This place is horrible. Smells like balls.
The first shot of Birdman, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Academy Award-winning film for Best Picture, is of an underwear-bearing Michael Keaton meditating in his dressing room. The peculiar thing about this shot, despite Keaton floating three feet in the air, is that from that moment until about the last 10-or-20 minutes of the film, the camera doesn’t even flicker. The majority of this film is presented as one seemingly continuous shot, roaming powerfully through New York City and the St. James Theater, where its protagonist Riggan Thomson (Keaton) is trying to reignite his acting career.
Thomson gained popularity in the 90’s for playing the exuberant superhero Birdman (much like Keaton did for playing Batman in the Tim Burton film), and left the franchise when he felt the production’s motivation steer away from audience entertainment and move towards gross and personal profit (once again like Keaton’s Batman experience). It’s a respectable and moral move, but Riggan isn’t spared the consequence many popular and not necessarily great actors face – a career stagnation; the Birdman image crippling his credibility and shadowing over him, literally. The actual Birdman character makes a couple of appearances, either as a shadow behind Thomson’s steps or as a voiceover inside his head. It’s mainly the latter.
Riggan’s show, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” is of his own writing (a screenplay adaptation of a 1981 short story), and of his own direction. An “ambitious” Broadway debut explains the notoriously difficult and acclaimed actor portrayed by Edward Norton, Mike Shiner. But with the help of his lawyer and best friend, Jake (Zach Galifinakis), Thomson gets his shot.
And it is that shot that the film is based on, not on the actual success or failure of the show itself, but the opportunity. The few glimpses shown of the play are through the disastrous previews and rehearsals. But with that said, the characters, especially Riggan, still want the show to succeed, so all of the stress and troubles that go into the production are shown through them, but that still is not the audiences’ concern – we are rather much more interested in Birdman and the celebrity, just as everyone else in this world seems to be.
Theoretically, Riggan’s underdog story should be enough to attract the sympathetic viewer, but the Birdman character is presented with such a large amount of clever confidence that it is unclear whom Iñárritu wants the audience to become engaged.
Birdman makes a clear distinction between fame and prestige, and really emphasizes how separate the two concepts are. “You’re not an actor, you’re a celebrity,” argues theater critic Tabitha (Lindsay Duncan), she holds the play’s fate in her tightly gripped fists. Just before that remark, across the bar, Riggan had been ridiculed by Mike for being an inferior actor, and before those words were given a chance to be comprehended, two fans ask Birdman for an autograph. It’s a minor personal victory, perhaps.
Though the filmmakers continue insisting that the film is not autobiographical towards Keaton, the Batman actor, like his character, delivers what many of his fans have been hoping for: a comeback, and perhaps the performance of his career (this being his only Oscar-nominated role). He implements bits and pieces of the comedic style he used back in Beetlejuice and adds in a dramatic energy to his repertoire that comes off almost foreign. It is unusual for sure, but it is very much welcome, and he uses it again the next year in Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight. Birdman may become the start off point for the second chapter of Keaton’s career.
And Keaton’s performance is only at the top of this film’s pyramid. Birdman features an all-around strong cast that comes together as a team to provide Keaton with the room he needs to experiment with his style. Norton, like Shiner, challenges Keaton to be the better actor, and the wonderful Emma Stone, who plays Thomson’s daughter Sam, makes it happen – in a scene in which her character punctures Riggan’s soul with a furiously-worded monologue (“You’re scared to death, like the rest of us, that you don’t matter. And you know what, you’re right. You don’t.”), Keaton doesn’t refute, he just stands with his nose pointed to the ground as Sam walks away.
This depressing and humbling dialogue makes up the film’s best scene.
With the expectations of such a high-caliber cast, it is not Keaton, it is not Norton, nor is it Stone that deliver the most surprising performance; it is Galifinakis. Known mainly from the “Between Two Ferns” comic sketches and his reoccurring part in The Hangover franchise, this atmosphere is not in the comedian’s regular habitat, even though Birdman is a comedy. And as the eccentric attorney, his range as an actor has broadened significantly, and it will hopefully open the door to many other opportunities in dramatic film.
Birdman’s black comedy and originality resonate with those looking for something new, and somewhere they have never been before. And Iñárritu, with those characteristics close at hand, has created one of the most unique and intriguing stories of modern times.
