Directed by: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Starring: Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, Emma Stone, Zach Galifianakis, Naomi Watts, Andrea Riseborough, Amy Ryan
Just because a movie is "different" doesn't make it wholly successful. Birdman qualifies as such a movie. The acting is top-notch, but having such strong performances in this movie is akin to having the best violinists on the Titanic. Birdman isn't happy being different, it wants to be Different. If the story were told without flights of fancy, hallucinations, and unexplained plot points, it may have been a treasure. Instead, what sticks out most in the viewer's memory are scenes like Riggan Thompson (Keaton) flying around Manhattan in a CGI-induced hallucination. What gets lost is the people, who are at the mercy of director (and co-writer Inarritu's) overly active imagination. It can't get out of its own way.
Keaton plays Riggan, who like Keaton himself once played a 90's film superhero. Riggan played Birdman, a winged superhero, twenty years before but is now days away from his Broadway debut. The parallels can't be a coincidence. He writes, produces, directs, and stars in a Broadway adaptation of a Raymond Chandler novel. Things begin to unravel as one of his co-stars is struck by a spotlight falling from the ceiling. The replacement is Mike Shriner (Norton), a volatile, sometimes insufferable method actor who has a tanning bed shipped to his dressing room. During one of the previews, Mike breaks character and complains that there isn't real gin in the glass he's drinking from. Riggan wants to fire Mike, but is talked out of it by his agent Jake (Galifianakis), whose job is to run interference and talk Riggan off the ledge on more than one occasion. If there is a guy who needs to be talked off the ledge often, it is Riggan, who is haunted by a taunting voice of an imaginary Birdman that constantly reminds him of the actor he used to be.
When we first see Riggan, he is in his tighty whities meditating while floating above the floor in his dressing room. There are instances in which Riggan seems to have supernatural powers, or at least ESP, but this is not explained. Riggan has staked his personal and professional fortune on the success of the play. He wants to be Relevant. His daughter Sam (Stone) works as his personal assistant, but has issues of her own as a recovering drug addict. She also catches the eye of Mike, causing further tension between Mike and Riggan. Riggan's ex-wife (Ryan) is on the periphery, lamenting about the direction things have taken between the two. Riggan is also sleeping with his co-star who may or may not be pregnant. It is little wonder, I suppose, that he fantasizes about being able to fly above the city.
There is a lot to juggle for Inarritu and company. Much of the action takes place within the confines of the cavernous theater, creating a hermetic world in which the walls are closing in and the ceilings are threatening to collapse on top of our characters. Some of the characters escape to the rooftops just to breathe, if not to consider jumping off. Birdman is effective conveying this world which threatens to suffocate all within it.
Birdman flies off the rails, however, when it allows too much weirdness to intervene. It falls back on too much whimsy and too much supernatural nonsense. Why does Riggan seem to have supernatural powers? What is the nature of Leslie's (Watts) relationship with Riggan's girlfriend? Such loose ends are left without a payoff. These are some of the frustrating aspects of Birdman.
Yet, when Birdman does work, it works well. My overall view of the film is of dislike, but not disinterest. The film is technically sound, but suffers because of the screenplay. I wish Inarritu had chosen to play the material straight and not right angling in the wacky business it could've done without.
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