SIDEBAR: See our red-carpet interviews with cast of "Birdman" here!
“And what did you want?” “To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on this earth.” Iñárritu quotes Raymond Carver at the beginning of his new film Birdman, and these words provide the bedrock on which the structure of the film rests. How fundamental is this simple desire to the many antic diversions of our society? Birdman tells the story of Riggan Thompson, a former superhero actor who attempts to turn the page from being a disposable celebrity to a dignified creator, a maker of Art, but through the film we are able to see that these are simply different contexts for him to chase his true desire – to feel himself beloved on this earth.
Birdman, the first comedy from Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu is a chaotic delight, brimming with manic energy yet at its heart consumed with serious questions that it examines with the utmost sincerity. Taking a page from his own life, Michael Keaton plays an actor who walked away from a superhero franchise in the nineties. Riggan wants to reboot his public image by mounting a serious production on Broadway, an adaptation of Carver’s “What we Talk About When we Talk About Love,” that Riggan has ambitiously adapted and will direct and star in. The action begins a few days before previews when the other male lead is injured and Lesley (Naomi Watts) suggests her boyfriend, Mike Shiner (Edward Norton), as a replacement. Shiner is enormously talented, but a loose cannon backstage, pushing everyone’s buttons, especially Riggan’s. Also backstage is Riggan’s daughter Sam (Emma Stone), a cynic just out of rehab and none too pleased to be acting as an assistant for a father she doesn’t particularly like.
The entire ensemble is terrific and there’s a fun backstage comedy here about the machinations and breakdowns that the entire cast and crew deal with as opening night approaches. But all of the drama on the periphery only really matters in that it pushes Riggan’s already fragile mental state closer and closer to the breaking point. Iñárritu and his brilliant cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki shoot the entire movie to give the illusion that it’s one unbroken tracking shot, giving the events a jagged immediacy and frenzied energy. Riggan has tasted success before and lost it, but now he wants it back, badly, in a different, more prestigious form. He’s staked everything he has on this production, weathered the disdain of Broadway professionals (encapsulated in a withering drama critic), and sees the show as his one final chance to earn love on a massive scale. As opening night approaches, his sleep deprived mental state devolves into a mêlée between his superhero ego, his desperate Carver character, and his own petty human needs until they all converge in an attempt to transmute himself into art, a act that is equal parts shocking, inevitable, tragic, and hilarious. In short, the perfect ending.
Birdman is an audacious performance for all involved, but especially for Iñárritu, to try new material in such a daring manner, and for Keaton. Keaton is playing a character uncomfortably close to himself and puts his entire ego, especially the messy bits, on display under a dazzling marquee. It’s a career defining performance. All of the characters are well cast and acted, Norton in particular is wonderful, but this is really Keaton’s show. Birdman reasserts that comedy is a powerful and necessary way to take on serious issues, doing so with formal daring, surprising pathos, and a sense of fun.
