Birdman’s biggest feat may be drawing in, and then artfully toying with, an audience that expects a superhero movie. It’s actually a complex metafiction about creativity and identity aimed at art-house types, but in theaters, that second audience will get some free entertainment from the audible and mounting confusion of the first.
Birdman centers on Riggan Thomson, a sixty-ish actor played here by a majestically crumbling Michael Keaton. Thompson played the megapopular superhero Birdman in the early ‘90s, just as the real-life Keaton played Batman — but unlike the respected Keaton, Thompson has become a marquee caricature of the artist he once was, and he’s starting to feel it. In a bid to reconstruct his image, both public and self-, he writes, directs, and stars in a stage adaptation of Raymond Carver’s "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love."
The bulk of Birdman chronicles the manic, often hilarious struggles of Thomson and his cohort to create a great stage play. Set to a soundtrack of sharp jazz drumming, and filmed in technically brilliant long takes that transport us seamlessly around the theatre and between moments in time, events unfold breathlessly and emotions run sky-high — sometimes too much so.
Riggan hires Mike Shiner, a mercurial and renowned stage actor, to play opposite him. Played by a pulsating Edward Norton, Shiner is a slightly seedy genius, and a brief sequence where he rips apart the motivations behind a single line of dialogue is a powerful window into the process of narrative creation. Almost as important is Emma Stone, who, as Thomson’s troubled daughter, fiercely reminds him that in the age of Twitter, adapting a 60-year-old short story might not be the golden road to renewed relevance.
The people and obstacles around him wear Riggan Thomson down, and it’s in depicting his instability that Iñárritu has the most fun with the superhero trope. Riggan hears voices, has visions, and may be more than he appears. For viewers in the know, this is the Mexican director embracing Latin American magical realism. But for those who came in the door expecting The Dark Knight Resurrected, it’s a cute bit of misdirection.
Birdman is full of tirades and jabs lobbed at Hollywood and celebrity, though stagecraft and the critical gatekeepers of ‘good taste’ take their own licks for hypocrisy and self-absorption. But between the ire and the narrative trickery, Iñárritu’s goal is clearly akin to Michael Haneke's with Funny Games — to entertain an audience, then make them question their own enjoyment. The two layers come together in a conclusion that at once reaches a bit too hard for surreal transcendence, and sets a cruel, excellent trap for those addicted to blockbuster redemption.
3.5 out of 5 stars
Rated R. Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu. Starring Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts, Zach Galifianakis. Now playing.
