**Spoiler Alert**
Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu/Starring: Michael Keaton, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts, Edward Norton, Zach Galifianakis, Andrea Riseborough, Amy Ryan and Lindsay Duncan
I've always found director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's films so serious as to be suffocating. Even so, his talent has always been very conspicuous. In Birdman, we finally see some of the dark humor that has been sadly absent from films like 21 Grams and Babel.
Inarritu's film is dark, funny, surreal and it features extraordinary performances--particularly Michael Keaton's. To put it bluntly; it's a helluva film. It's also one of the year's best.
Michael Keaton plays Riggan Thomson, a one-time successful Hollywood actor whose career is now on the skids. He is famous for a series of Hollywood blockbusters in which he played a superhero named Birdman; a role that haunts him in many ways and that weighs on his career.
He has adapted a Raymond Carver story called What We Talk About When We Talk About Love for the Broadway stage and has strained his finances in the process. Riggan's career rides on the play's success, which burdens the production with a do-or-die imperative.
The production is fraught with obstacles, mishaps, actor's frail egos and in some cases, selfish arrogance. Unhappy with a male cast member, Riggan arranges for a stage light to fall on the actor's head, which provides a pretext for replacing him. His lawyer Jake (a terrific Zach Galifianakis), finds a talented but very difficult actor named Mike Shiner (superbly played by Edward Norton), whose prima donna behavior isn't relegated to the stage. Complicating Riggen's production is Shiner's stormy relationship with another cast member named Lesley (Naomi Watts).
Attached to the production is Riggan's daughter Sam (an awesome Emma Stone), who acts as his assistant. Sam's relationship with her father comes with a deep-seated animosity relating to his absenteeism during her formative years.
It doesn't take but a minute for Shiner to hit on Sam after meeting her, which disgusts her at first but his rogue-like appeal overcomes her later; a development that irks her father acutely.
Riggan has relationship issues of his own. He is divorced from Sam's mother and is carrying on a relationship with the other woman in the cast named Laura (Andrea Riseborough), whose disclosure to Riggan about being pregnant doesn't elicit a response that might please her.
As egos clash and romance ebbs and flows, Riggan tears his hair out over the pre-opening performance, which allows little time for Shiner to warm to his role. Compounding his stress is Shiner's contempt for Riggan's success in Hollywood. Shiner isn't beyond belittling what he sees as Riggan's meager acting talent and his hubristic attempt to restore artistic credibility by acting onstage.
Lying in wait like an angry predator is the formidable New York theater critic Tabitha (an intimidating Lindsay Duncan), whose reviews can make or break any stage production.
The film's eccentricities are many. Riggan's Birdman alter-ego offers whispery advice and is hardly his better angel. Always urging him to discard his artistic ambitions, he becomes another nemesis he must overcome. Riggan also imagines he possesses Birdman's telekinetic abilities; which he uses capriciously and sometimes violently.
Inarritu uses many tracking shots when the characters navigate the tunnel-like corridors of the theater. This gives the film a constrictive, claustrophobic feeling, as if the characters are held captive by a theater world that allows no escape. Aside from a few scenes, most of the film takes place inside the theater or on its rooftop, where the towering, Manhattan office buildings seem to keep the theater penned in.
The barriers between performance and real life are effectively dissolved, which denies the audience its reality moorings. Actors often sound as if they are reciting a soliloquy rather than speaking conversationally.
The performances are uniformly stellar. I've heard many moviegoers ask about Keaton's whereabouts the past decade; his long absence from the screen has been strange. Here he gives the performance of his career and though I hate to call it a comeback, it very much feels like one. It also is eerily similar to his onscreen character's. It's easy to see why Keaton would accept the role; he too has a Birdman in his past with his Batman character. One wonders if Riggan is his real-life reach for credibility and career restoration. If so, it will most certainly revive his career.
Emma Stone's career is still ascending and her performance is one of the most striking in the film. Sam is a skein of resentment, anger, conflicted love/hate feelings for her father, sexual longing, and substance abuse. Emma Stone's big, beautiful eyes can convey both hurt and anger and innocence and vulnerability so powerfully. They are used to devastating effect in Inarritu's close-ups.
The opening night performance concludes with a horrific act, which leads to Tabitha's improbable critique and Riggan's darkly amusing hospitalization. The ending is delightfully ambiguous and maybe appropriate; how else could Inarritu possibly conclude a film both so bizarre and yet so grounded in real emotion?
Birdman is magical realism and comic lunacy spiked with a bitterness that underlies the entire film. It is an odd, wonderful, experience that elicits an assortment of emotional reactions; elation, sad reflection, and maybe the most potent response: wonder. I've seen very few films this year that invite repeat viewings; Birdman belongs in that rare and rarefied company.
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