Review: 'Birdman' - Fantasy Takes Flight

There are a group of films released each year which are said to be populated with ‘Oscar Moments’. These are the scenes where the actors work their socks off emoting and reaching deep inside themselves to unleash bathos, pathos and find kudos. They’re the moments when you might sigh, let out a little breath; perhaps an awww, even shed a tear.

I used to ‘know’ a great moment in a film when I got involuntary goose bumps. I don’t get them so much these days, is that because I’m inured or because I can all too often see the ‘stitches’ these days, films so finely manufactured that there are no surprises and there are more Oscar Moments than genuine examples of nuanced performance. The two aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive but I’m becoming more and more cynical about exploitation and manipulation. Blockbusters are on the rise and thrive on exploitation so maybe the response by other genre makers is to employ the same devices, After all many blockbuster directors ‘cross over’ to narrative films.

Birdman stars Michael Keaton as Riggan Thomson, a former superstar thanks to the hit Birdman series of films. A couple of decades later and we find him struggling financially, has been abandoned by Hollywood and according to his daughter is relevance deprived. We find him making his Broadway debut in an adaptation of a Raymond Carver novel, self financed and taking on the director role. His male co-star has to leave the play just before previews and is replaced by Edward Norton just to add another dynamic in a film about dynamics and dynamism. It’s also a film of Oscar Moments and a fair bit of verbosity.

The performances are all solid apart from, surprisingly, Naomi Watts who grates in nearly every scene.

I have to confess I didn’t understand everything that was going on and I’d hoped the ending of the film was about three scenes before the ‘real’ ending came (however the penultimate scene was terrific).

The film is technically accomplished. It appears the film is shot in one continuous take – it’s not – something for the film fans to argue over. This works well in the confines of the St James Theatre and in one scene out on Times Square. It’s a conceit but a nice one for cinephiles.

It’s incredibly wordy, an actor’s film if you like, but good words, interesting words and yes sometimes baffling words. The support cast of Norton, Watts, Emma Stone and Lindsay Duncan set us up for the theme of love and acceptance and their aspirations around those. Stone probably does it best but I thought the almost cameo appearance of Duncan was possibly the most germane on the theme, a small scene, few words but oh what those words ‘said’. All those fine words tend to fizz out towards the end and there are too many loose threads left lying around while we are shunted into Riggan’s finale.

This is a film of very good moments. There is a lot to ponder on and chew over. Michael Keaton is riveting and proves he is an actor of note, a film actor for our times. If he does win an Oscar though I wonder whether it will be because of his acting overall or because of those Oscar Moments.

3½ out of 5

Postscript:  You know hundreds of films are released in America each year and yet less than a dozen of those films feature in the Oscars. Similarly hundreds, maybe thousands of actors appear in films through the year and yet maybe 25-30 are deemed worthy of an Oscar nomination. Nominations are about marketing and campaigns (read about Jennifer Aniston and her campaign to get a nomination this year) and trends. We tend to rush to see a film that is nominated rather than equally worthy films that might be on. I get it, I’m no different. I think we just need to know the reality and contain our reverence for some of these awards sometimes. Is it not perfectly possible to have every film released in the running for awards and just have them voted on? The ones that get the most votes win the ‘most popular’ award and perhaps have a panel similar to the Cannes judging jury who award ‘best performance’ awards. Just sayin’