He used to be Birdman. It’s the refrain that’s dogged Michael Keaton’s Riggan Thomson for years. Once famous for playing the winged superhero in a trio of films that finished two decades ago, he’s now only famous for… well playing Birdman two decades ago. But all that’s about to change as Riggan sets out to win artistic credibility by writing, directing and starring in a Broadway adaptation of Raymond Carver’s short stories. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s film sometimes lets its vastly impressive technical achievements eclipse content but a full house of top performances, none more so than Keaton and Edward Norton’s artistic yin and yang, and a caustically ambitious sweep ensure that when Birdman burns bright it’s white hot.
Keaton is at the heart of everything good playing on his own experience as an A-list star who no longer commands the dizzy heights. He’s sick of being considered a celebrity rather than an artist and is determined to do something meaningful. Broadway offers salvation and threatens destruction as Riggan comes to blows with tempestuous theatre star Mike Shiner (Edward Norton), runs up vast debts and neglects his daughter Sam (Emma Stone). As relationships crumble around him, and previews go wrong in increasingly erratic ways, Riggan finds his Birdman persona beginning to take over, urging a return to past glories.
Iñárritu, working with Gravity cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, has produced a technical marvel. Using a series of long-takes, the camera arcs gracefully around actors, nearly always in motion, following them as they walk the confines of the theatre. Time blends together. Riggan will be discussing the evening’s preview one moment then after travelling the length of a darkened corridor we’re on stage watching it unfold. Rarely absent is Antonio Sánchez’s drum arrangements, a mesmeric musical heartbeat.
In Birdman’s weaker moments, the filmmaking becomes so virtuoso that it overshadows content. Scenes glide by, the focus on the swirling camera, not its subject. At its best though, Iñárritu has crafted a showbiz satire with a sly, dark heart. In Riggan and Mike, the battle between artistic truth and popular success comes into sharp conflict. There’s a wary admiration tested to breaking point, the two coming to blows at one stage. Rarely has a film managed to reach the disturbed recesses of an actor’s mind to this degree. The mind features prominently. As Riggan struggles, Birdman flies free capturing his soul and discarding sanity. Soon he’s imagining epic battles across New York as he leaps from buildings and soars over the city.
There’s a strange kind of normality that comes from performances this unhinged which leaves the final word and the final act with Keaton. He’s shuffled across Times Square in y-fronts, smashed dressing rooms with the flick of a finger and ensured opening night ended with a very literal bang. As he sinks ever further into Birdman, the line between fact and fiction blurs irrevocably achieving the final victory not for art or entertainment, but for the world they are forced to share.
Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Stars: Michael Keaton, Zach Galifianakis, Edward Norton
Runtime: 119 min
Country: USA
Film Rating: 
