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Alejandro González Iñárritu’s pitch-dark backstage comedy Birdman opens on an
arresting image: a man in a dressing room, seated in the lotus position in his
underwear, appearing to hover in midair. Is this a magic being capable of
defying the laws of gravity? A regular earthbound man dreaming of flight? Or
something in between the two—an illusionist? An actor? The camera, too, hovers
for a long moment behind the man’s back, giving us time to wonder what kind of
world we’ve been dropped into—then pulls back from this floating figure to
investigate his shabby dressing room, before eventually zipping off down the
narrow theater corridors, into the wings, and onto the stage. It’s the beginning
of a movie that, while ultimately less satisfying than I hoped, features two
breathtaking star turns: one from its lead actor and another from that camera,
wielded by the indisputably magical Emmanuel Lubezki.
You may have seen Lubezki’s bold and technically innovative work in
Gravity and The
Tree of Life. In Birdman, his camera bounds through the movie’s confined spaces
like a curious animal, poking its nose wherever it wishes, following whomever it
likes. Though it wouldn’t be accurate to say Birdman was filmed in a single long
take—there are several moments when characters pass through a darkened space in
order to mask visible cuts, the digital-age equivalent of the reel changes in
Rope—Iñárritu and Lubezki go to great lengths to make sure the film feels to the
viewer like one continuous shot. The necessary feats of timing and blocking on
the parts of both cast and crew are spectacularly well conceived and executed,
even if you’re not always sure how the illusion serves this specific story. But
that roving camera is reliably one of the most intelligent and vibrant presences
onscreen.
That’s saying something in a movie that contains a lead performance from Michael
Keaton. Keaton, whose dervish like energy and sly wit made him one of the
biggest successes
 of
1980s screen comedy, turned down a $15 million offer to make a third Batman
movie about 20 years ago and more or less retired to a quiet life on a Montana
ranch. (He’s appeared in a few movies here and there and does some voice work.)
In interviews, he comes off as an essentially happy, thoughtful, and
well-balanced person, with neither resentment toward nor nostalgia for show
business. That description could not be made of Riggan Thomson, the unwillingly
retired ex-superhero-actor Keaton plays in Birdman. Keaton has said the part of
Riggan wasn’t written specifically for him. If that’s true, it’s one inspired
piece of casting. What we know of the actor’s own history as an abdicator of the
superhero throne gives this role a depth beyond its somewhat thin conception on
the page—which is not to discount Keaton’s phenomenal performance as the
embittered showbiz has-been he could have been in another life.
But like the play Riggan Thomson is about to preview on Broadway—a stage
adaptation of a Raymond Carver story written, directed by, and starring Riggan
himself—Birdman’s aesthetic and intellectual ambitions outstrip its actual
ideas. For all its brilliant aspects—Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera and
Michael Keaton’s restless face, not to mention Naomi Watts, Ed Norton, and Emma
Stone giving razor-sharp comic performances—Birdman makes you gasp at its formal
audacity even as you sigh at its thematic over-familiarity. It’s a high-wire act
strung over a void. As Riggan’s Broadway show goes into previews, he’s in
desperate straits. An injured actor has been replaced at the last minute by Mike
Shiner (Norton), a grandstanding thespian whose obsession with onstage “honesty”
extends to breaking the fourth wall to chew out an unappreciative audience.
Shiner is sleeping with the play’s leading lady, Lesley (Watts), who’s a mess of
nerves about her long-awaited Broadway debut. The show’s producer, Jake (Zach
Galifianakis), keeps appearing in Riggan’s dressing room to update him on
theater-world rumors of the play’s imminent collapse—and of course, to remind
him that they’re almost out—seriously completely out—of money. Meanwhile,
Riggan’s daughter, Sam (Stone), fresh out of rehab, has begun working as her
father’s assistant, but she can’t bring herself to forgive him for years of
lackluster, self-obsessed parenting. She skulks through the theater in her dad’s
wake, mocking him for his vanity and evident neediness, tearing his ego down as
fast as he can build it back up.
Birdman continues to incorporate elements of magical realism after that first
levitation scene. In an ongoing conceit, Riggan is visited in his dressing room
by his superhero-suited alter ego (voiced by Keaton), a forbidding yet faintly
comical figure clad in shimmering black feathers and a beaked mask. Birdman is
at once Riggan’s inner critic and his inner enabler, able to describe in detail
all his creator’s worst character flaws and then shamelessly exploit the m.
But this split between the actor and the monstrously successful myth he’s
created—which could have made for one of the richest relationships in the movie,
not to mention a great acting challenge for Keaton—never transcends the status
of a contrivance. We intermittently glimpse Birdman perched on the arm of a
chair (or in one case, on a toilet). On and off, we hear his disembodied voice
(impossibly low, like Keaton’s Batman rumble passed through an electronic
gravelizer) as he cruelly torments Riggan with references to his past glory,
then plies him with whatever empty puffery he needs to hear. But we never get a
sense of what playing this character once meant to Riggan, much less learn
anything about the iconography or fandom of the scowling, winged superhero. For
a movie that both stars and tells the story of a former cape-wearer, Birdman
seems notably uninterested in exploring the comic-book movie as a form, even if
only to satirize or critique it. As the (highly ambiguous) ending approaches,
the identities of the actor and his avian creation sometimes seems to be merging
back into one again—a sign either that Riggan has finally stopped regretting and
second-guessing his past, or that he’s finally gone completely off his rocker.
But movies don’t have to be perfect to make for exciting viewing, and this one
in particular, with its dazzling formal presentation, demands to be seen on the
big screen. (In fact, watching it
feels, at times, not unlike a ride—a description that was leveled as a criticism
at Alfonso Cuarón’s [and Lubezki’s]
Gravity last
year—but that seems less contemptuous when applied to a film with this much
deliberately antic energy.) Keaton rises to the formidable challenge of
under acting as an actor who overacts. Norton has one of his funniest roles in
years as Mike, a self-serious ham who’s impotent offstage but priapic the minute
the curtain rises. And Galifianakis gets a rare chance to play a straight-man
role, his earthy presence providing a backdrop for the Keaton character’s
frequent bouts of hysteria. The female performers get short shrift in comparison
to the male ones, especially Andrea Riseborough, who plays Riggan’s possibly
pregnant mistress in a role so underdeveloped you begin to wonder if she’s a
figment of his imagination.
Late in the film, as Riggan’s seemingly doomed opening night approaches, he
stumbles into a liquor store to buy a bottle of booze as a homeless man (or is
it an auditioning actor?) stands on the street bellowing the famous “tomorrow
and tomorrow and tomorrow” speech from Macbeth: “Life’s but a walking shadow, a
poor player/ Who struts and frets his hour upon the stage … ” Birdman does its
own share of strutting and fretting during its two hours on the screen: The
camera struts while the dialogue frets. There’s also plenty of sound and fury,
including a hard-edged percussion score from the drummer Antonio Sanchez. This
is no tale told by an idiot—on the contrary, it’s a funny, fast-moving parable
about fame and ambition, laid out for us with care and craft by a gifted
filmmaker, a long-missed actor, and a world-class cinematographer. But I’m left
with the suspicion the whole thing may signify—well, if not nothing, at least a
good deal less than the filmmakers would have us believe.
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