The work of director Alejandro González Iñárritu, known previously for his multi-character non-linear pieces such as Amores Perros, 21 Grams, and Babel, Birdman is a different beast from these interwoven stories entirely.
Primarily the exploration of one man’s struggle against his ego, it features Michael Keaton as Riggan Thomson, the washed-up star of 90s superhero franchise Birdman - now staging a Broadway adaptation of Raymond Carver’s short story What We Talk About When We Talk About Love in a bid to find the validation and worth that, despite his Hollywood megabucks, have always eluded him.
The film chronicles the few days of rehearsals and previews leading up to the play’s opening night, as Riggan, increasingly beset by internal voices of self-loathing and -criticism and -doubt, lurches inexorably towards mental collapse. Riggan’s ego is personified in the figure of Birdman, who leers over him, in full feathered costume, gravel-voiced, purring that he’s a joke, a failure, that his aspirations of respectability are doomed and he should go back to the only thing he’s ever been good at - making popcorn thrillers adored by the slack-jawed masses.
It’s very funny. Partly because of the obvious parallels between Riggan and Keaton himself, who played Batman - on whom the brooding Birdman is clearly based - three decades ago. But the humour isn’t all self-referential, although there are plenty of sideswipes at blockbuster cinema and the cult of celebrity. It is a comedic film, playful, wry, deadpan; a comedy in the same way you might say Pulp Fiction is a comedy.
Keaton mines the part for all he’s worth, playing Riggan as vainglorious, desperate, monstrously self-pitying, and entirely relatable. His failures are our failures, too. And the supporting cast is terrific. Ed Norton is the critically adored method actor spilling his blood, and other bodily fluids, across the boards in pursuit of authenticity and truth. He is magnetic, impressive, and hilariously insecure. Naomi Watts is his on- and off-screen partner, her role smaller, her performance as mesmerising as ever. And Emma Stone plays Riggan’s drug-addicted daughter and PA, cynical, cutting through the pomp of the other characters, yet underneath the manufactured insouciance and thick eyeliner as broken and uncertain as the rest of them.
Everyone is superb, but it is Riggan that Iñárritu makes star of the show. He is a child, warped, kept brittle, by fame, battling enormously to be an adult, yet utterly incapable of taking the steps necessary to move beyond himself. All his energy is turned inwards. Where Ed Norton’s character pushes his struggles out into the world around him, Riggan withdraws, ruminates. He is being sucked into quicksand inside himself. No one in the film knows what they’re doing, what life is about; they are all lost and scared. And yet they get on with things. Live their lives. Riggan can’t do this. His ego is a black hole at the centre of his being, pulling him in.
It is a struggle with which I have experience, and I love how it is visualised and explored here.
This is as much down to Iñárritu’s directorial style as Keaton’s delivery. The camera is ever on the move, inquisitive, agitated, peering in at characters, searching for something it cannot find. The shots are mostly steadicam and handheld, with wide-angle lenses filming in close-up to create a dreamlike, claustrophobic feel. There’s an urgency and restlessness to it all, a jazz syncopation engendered through the camera and dialogue as much as through the persistent scattershot drumming pattering across the soundtrack.
And there is Riggan’s telekinesis - the opening shot shows him levitating in his dressing room in his baggy and faded Y-fronts, and in quiet moments alone he is prone to dragging, twirling and hurling inanimate objects - like Darth Vader, or perhaps Matilda - exerting his gargantuan movie star/superhero influence upon the external world… although in one telling scene we watch him godlike, wreaking havoc upon his dressing room, and then the camera spins as his agent (Zach Galifianakis, who again is very good, and funny) opens the door - the camera spins back, now implied as the agent’s point of view, to reveal Riggan stood in a pile of mess impotently tearing up shreds of newspaper - with his plain old human hands. It’s a fabulous moment, heightened by Riggan’s embarrassment once he realises he is being watched, perfectly capturing how vast and powerful and tragic we feel in our own heads, versus how small and shameful we feel when viewed from someone else’s.
Birdman is a dazzling film. The technical accomplishments necessary to create the long and intricate takes, the abrupt changes of location, the unbroken transitions between POV, between dream and reality, beggar belief. Yet it does not feel like a technical film. Yes, occasionally it is showy, enamoured by its own wizardry, but mostly it services character and emotion, the craftsmanship of the continuous takes providing tension and excitement without drawing attention to itself.
I’m less certain about the film’s conclusion, though. It works, but feels dangerously close to a cop-out. In the end I’m not sure it quite knows what to say about, what to make of, the themes it brings up.
But as a portrait of a man grappling with his ego it is fresh, boisterous, and captivating, both tongue-in-cheek and sincere at the same time. Iñárritu has the wisdom to puncture his protagonist’s inflated sense of self-importance at every turn, yet the compassion to retain tenderness and pathos while he does it, mining the material for humour and poignancy in equal measure. Birdman is one of my favourite films of the decade. It soars.
Well worth a revisit
ReplyDeleteOnce again inspired me to check it out.
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