Long takes consisting of swooning, uniquely-angled camera shots are set to the riveting backdrop of a hypnotically spare solo jazz drum. Weaving Antonio Sanchez’s dazzling minimalist score around the action and as an ironic comment on it, director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarittu has created a movie that essentially plays as much like a brilliant piece of music as it does an invigorating film. Inarittu (Amores Perros, Babel, 21 Grams) has made an unconventionally wild film that grabs the viewer’s coattails, then proceeds to shake him until he has smoke coming out of his ears.
Witness Birdman, a one-of-a-kind high drama of the world of theatrical artists that, both structurally and narratively, drops in on a few actors as they rehearse an adaptation of Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Here’s Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton), a former star of the Superhero movie genre, who struggles with his current state as a has-been. There’s egomaniacal Mike Shiner (Edward Norton) , a renowned leading man of the stage, who’s been called on to co-star with Riggan in the play. Riggan also wrote and directs the play-within-a-movie and these two don’t get along, nor even respect each other, very much, yet coexist since Mike is basically aboard as the troubled production’s rescuer. And here’s Sam (Emma Stone), Riggan’s daughter, just out of rehab, who locks gazes with and looks down on Mike from the get go.
Together with Lesley (Naomi Watts), who also acts in the play and was a former co-star, lover, and then nemesis of Mike’s; and a ruthless producer/lawyer (Zach Galifianakis) ) who sees to it that the slippery show must go on, the principals of Birdman set forth on a crazy stew of creativity and creative stumbling blocks, on a rip-roaring tale of redemption and failure. With Keaton himself a former superhero leading man who’s star hasn’t shown as brightly in recent years, the film also tantalizes with an unnerving blend of fiction and a perhaps-reality.
When Riggan’s ex-wife Sylvia, (Amy Ryan), both loving and piercingly critical, visits him backstage, an extra layer of background on Riggan’s past comes forth. From early scenes with his daughter we’ve already got an idea that he fell on some hard times personally as well as professionally. And, hey, this guy must be struggling since he’s regularly having an ongoing dialogue with the inner voice of Birdman himself, Riggan’s alter ego in his former life.
With just the right amount of playful fantasy, Riggan alternatively turns his back on, confronts, and transcends his Birdman ghosts. Inarritu takes us on a thrilling ride along the inner workings of the making of a Broadway play. Included in the vivid realism are a compelling set of scenes with a fictional NY Times theater critic Tabitha (Lindsay Duncan), that allows Riggan to express what may be nearly every actor’s dream: an actual chance to lash out to a prominent critic. His no-holds-barred dressing down of Tabitha is one of many of Birdman’s memorable scenes, including the are-they-real-or-are-they-not scenes of magical realism involving Riggan that punctuate the heavy goings-on.
The ensemble actors, children of a most insightful and ambitious casting, work together seamlessly. Keaton, Norton, and Emma Stone all provide probably their best film work yet. Inarritu, long a director with much creative sizzle and even more potential, has put down a nastily good mindblower of a movie–exhilarating every inch of the way, and ripe for retrospection. Warning: returning to “regular” movies after Birdman could very well produce a bit of cinematic PTSD.