Review: Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

It has taken me a while but I know believe that director Alejandro González Iñárritu is incapable of anything but literal melodrama. Birdman is supposed to be a satirical and witty attack on the age old battle between art and commerce, between popular mass and artistic integrity.  Unfortunately, the film is handled so literally it is removed of any sense of insight and has hardly a thing to say. Instead it feels like an exercise in ego, the director grinding an axe with anyone who has never been moved by his previous art.

Birdman stars Michael Keaton as Riggan Thompson, a once popular actor for his Birdman superhero persona. As the film opens, he is neck deep into an arty adaptation of a Raymond Carver short story for Broadway. This is to be his big comeback as well as proof that he is a legitimate artist. The cast rounds out stage managers and other actors. Edward Norton plays Riggan's co-star in the play and gives a ridiculous performance of a self involved actor on the rise. Emma Stone as Riggan's daughter is the only one here who feels real even if she is playing a cliche character, the daughter with daddy and drug issues. Her performance feels alive and authentic and unchained from the rest of the film.

Birdman's first half is less problematic. Introducing us to the setting and the main players,  the film creates a wonderful sense of the pressure cooker environment behind the scenes of a Broadway play. This is largely due to the technically stunning work of cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, who shoots the entire movie as primarily one single long take (thanks to some clever digital editing). As the film progresses though, this technique begins to feel like nothing more than a parlour trick. this is largely due to the fact that Inarritu does nothing with it. One could argue that we are meant to be with our main character the whole time, unable to escape from his pressures and his life. However, the camera regularly abandons him and in some cases it leaves during what feel like big moments. And in a few instances, the camera is there to remind us of what is real and what is in Riggan's head.

The clever way the film is shot sums up what is rotten at the core of Birdman. There is plenty of showy acting and technical bravado but so little of it says anything. At the end of the film, Inarritu is hopefully down grinding the axe he has for all the critics who panned his previous efforts. Like those films, Birdman is too literal to be as profound and meaningful as the director thinks it is. The film's attempts at wit and satire feel sour and petty, nothing digs deep. Innaritu can mine great performances but doesn't know what to do with them here to add even a slight bit of depth to get beyond the literal take on the material. At one point the stock character that is keeping everything together actually says "I'm the one keeping everything together."

Oh and Birdman is meant to be a comedy. However the filmmaker's brand of comedy is curiously misogynistic. Dick jokes abound and females are nothing more than volatile play things with nice asses. The women in the film serve little purpose. At one point, a bond is made between the actresses in the play but the scene soon devolves into a lesbian kiss that is never revisited or developed upon. Thus the scene can only exist for gratuitous purposes. Perhaps that is the point, this is a profound satire is it not? However it is never clear in the film what is meant to be sincere and what is meant as satire. Its final big scene is preceded by a quiet moment where Riggan tells his wife his regrets. The scene is baffling, is it a fake moment suggesting Riggan can never have a real moment or is it a sincere moment? The dialogue is ridiculously sappy, like something out of a soap opera. Is it meant to be that sappy on purpose? In the end, Birdman sinks under its own weight.

2/5