Birdman (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2014)

[LQ]

I have to side with the detractors, too.

Spoiler

There were some interesting bits and pieces in Birdman , but the main impression I left with is likely not one that was intended: that art springs from a place of total narcissism. While that may ironically hold true for Iñárritu as I find that the film is placing Art and its Creator up on a transcendent pedestal that neither deserves, ultimately I wasn't interested in what was going on within Riggan's mind since it was consumed only with the self-loathing-self. Especially since I too inferred his play was not really even that good until Norton's Important Actor stepped in, and probably not even then. The shooting bothered me; I couldn't tell if he meant to kill himself and uh, missed? Or if he deliberately meant to shoot off a replaceable part of his face to show himself and the critical world at large that his art MEANS something to him? I don't think it was a smart dramatic choice to leave that ambiguous. Neither one is really compelling as it relates to the validity and merit of his play, anyway. The ending struck me as downright stupid, so I don't even know what to say about that.

I marveled at the technical bravura of the filmmaking, I thought the actors were all fantastic in their roles, I laughed a few times and moderately enjoyed the experience when not cringing at some of the dialogue, all the while not really compelled to care about any part of the movie at all.

[Snagsby]

First post, woohoo!

I understand some of the criticisms here (clunky dialogue) but I felt compelled to defend the film against the charge of deriding populist entertainment. I see the entire movie as too lighthearted, and as the characters as too ridiculous, to read it as an honest plea for artistic integrity, or magnificence, or what have you. A couple other things about that.

Spoiler

1. Keaton's character reaches his artistic apotheosis when he finally surrenders to the voice of the Birdman.
2. The only defenders of the art of theater are Edward Norton's character (whose acting ability is portrayed as a character flaw), and the critic, who's a bitch.
3. The parallels to Black Swan were so crazily striking. Now that was a movie about a real talented artist that really died for her art (and, uh, turned into a black bird). But in this movie we have a shoddy artist (also, uh, turning into a black bird) that doesn't actually even die for his art, he just shoots his nose off.
4. About shooting his nose off. I don't know what the character intended, but for the director: it's a compromise, right? He gets the "this guy will bleed for his art" credit but as soon as he does it the agent is scheming ways to profit from it and he has 80,000 followers on Twitter. It's no more an artistic triumph than it is a populist triumph.
5. The new nose also reminds us of the media session where you had one snooty guy talking about Roland Barthes and a ditzy girl asking about weird plastic surgery. So in the end, Keaton does get facial reconstruction, which lowers him to the level of celebrity desperation that the ditzy journalist implied he had.

And let's not forget that Inarritu is apparently best buds with the directors of Hellboy, Harry Potter, and Pacific Rim. He's working here with many blockbuster veterans, as he has in the past. Give him a little credit here. This isn't a naked, artless attack on Hollywood.

I agree that his past movies have an amateur artsy philosophy about them, faux profundity, but this one was too much fun for me to see it as pretentious.

[mfunk9786]

What a dreadful waste of a high concept. The "one take" device of this film was mostly dazzling, when it wasn't aggressively showing off (Guys, you can't see the camera in the mirror! See?! We're moving it all over the place and NOPE, no camera! LOOK!) for the sake of showing off, but considering the awful script, it just came off feeling like that time Kevin Smith hired Vilmos Zsigmond to lens Jersey Girl. Iñárritu is so proud of himself from the opening credits, unashamedly calling back to Godard - luckily, the man's still alive, so he can't spin in his grave quite yet - and not letting up until the film mercifully ends after one of the most grating third acts that I can remember. Birdman spends a ton of time trying to hunt around for something to say, Something to Say, and comes up so nakedly empty that I could feel myself wince as Iñárritu finally pulled his film in for a landing, desperately looking for truth in material (that he wrote!) devoid of it. Like M. Night Shyamalan's execrable Lady in the Water, there's a bitter, shallow critic in this film, written in by a filmmaker who is clearly lacking in any sort of useful self-awareness, instead choosing to project his failures onto those who point them out. Even moreso than Bob Balaban's character in that film, the critic in Birdman is vengeful, vindictive, and regularly being questioned by other characters in the film about what makes them so empty inside. Yawn. After needing to sit through Birdman, I think Iñárritu should be asking himself that same question. Birdman may not be the worst film I've seen this year, but it's certainly the one I've hated the most.

I asked my wife as we were walking out (She saw it twice - twice! Poor woman.) if she can envision a scenario in which Punch-Drunk Love had contained cutaways to Jon Brion or one of his musicians banging away at percussion instruments during its tenser moments, and I think I might have nightmares about it. Could you imagine the gall?

[Jakamarak]

I liked this film considerably more than the previous poster, although I will say it was ultimately it left me pretty cold. I enjoyed Norton's take on a difficult, narcissistic actor quite a bit, but wished there was a stronger conclusion to his arc.

As for the single take-ness of it all, I frequently found it dazzling.

Spoiler

What I liked the most was how the story was not in real time, so eliding scenes in a single take played with the audience's sense of real time in striking and unusual ways. I thought this paid off brilliantly in the long scene with near the end where Amy Ryan's character visits Keaton during intermission and an entire act of the play within a play goes by during that conversation. Because of the way time has been played with throughout the film, the audience's perception of time is thrown off in an impressionistic way, like Keaton's character might be experiencing it.

I want to check it out again. I wanted to love it, but -- like I said -- I found myself emotionally distanced from it. That could be from looking for the "seams" between shots.

[DarkImbecile]

Maybe I was in a state of delirium because this was the fifth film in a row I saw in the theater that day, because it was 1 AM when I stumbled out of the theater, and/or because I'd been consuming too much sugar, salt, and fat all day, but I very much enjoyed Birdman. It struck me less as a bitter, faux-intellectual attack on mean old critics and vapid blockbusters than a flawed, manic, perfectly cast, aggressive but ultimately forgiving slap at every member of the film/theater crowd: actors, directors, critics, audience members, managers, enablers, etc.

It probably helped that I wasn't searching for profundity or thematic coherence or a grand statement about art, none of which seemed to be on the way from the opening frames; I just simply wallowed in the performances, the quirkiness of the surreal elements, and the (what seemed to me) purposely overwrought dialogue. In a bit of an upset - as what reliably wins me over to a given film's corner is the imagery/cinematography - I thought the long take conceit was finely executed, if nothing truly mind-blowing or revolutionary, but the real joy for me came in the performances, especially Keaton, Norton, Watts (who for a while now has seemed under-appreciated), and Ryan.

In light of the prevailing wisdom in this thread, I'm curious to see it again under more mundane, focused circumstances to see if my opinion radically changes, but I've never been able to summon up much disdain for Inarritu (though it's been roughly a decade since I've seen any of his first three films, and I never caught up with Biutiful).

[matrixschmatrix]

I don't wholly disagree with you- I feel as though the overall style of the movie is largely something that worked for me- but dear God, the parts that don't work don't work hard. I think for me, there's an issue with a movie that is 100% centered around masturbatory actorly self obsession in the first place, but obviously that's something that's been overcome in a number of great works- here, though, there's nothing whatsoever to undercut its central positioning in the universe of the film. But yes, absolutely the worst part is the critic, who is not only an absurd caricature of a sour, unpleasant hater criticizes because she can't create (perhaps the dullest argument imaginable) but who also proves ultimately to be intellectually dishonest, essentially writing a review before she sees a work, trying to protect Broadway from the encroachment of movie stars and popular culture (which means, I assume, that the movie is set in 1952, except that it tries so frequently and halfassedly to incorporate Twitter and Facebook, and comes off like someone's grandma in doing so.)

Spoiler

Her ultimate turn, praising the 'honesty' of shooting yourself on stage, does nothing to alleviate the bitterness of her characterization- it just makes her a bad critic, as well as a fraud, and underscores that for all the film's talk about how 'honest' and 'risky' everything Keaton's character was doing, it had no fucking idea of what it was talking about.

Weird, then, that I'd still say overall that I liked the movie, but I as I said, I enjoyed the style of it, and it's an overtly, forcefully stylish movie- and all of the central performances are fabulous. I definitely agree that it's a movie that, ultimately, has no idea of what it's trying to say, but I take maybe a shameful glee in enjoying such a wildly pretentious movie purely for its surfaces.

[DarkImbecile]

I think the reason the critic caricature ("criticature"?) didn't bother me is that the film's tone toward her didn't feel out of line with its treatment of the other characters; had I been taking Keaton's quest for relevance and respect seriously, then she might have seemed like an absurd straw man, but since she was basically just as cynical/hypocritical/self-involved/oblivious as the rest, it felt less like bitterness and more like equal opportunity farcical slander.

[criterion10]

I saw Birdman a few weeks ago, but never posted about it on here for some reason, even though I wrote a review for Letterboxd. Anyway, I haven't been as apathetic towards Iñárritu's works in the past, though I have felt that they all maintain a sort of superficiality, essentially that his films aren't as intelligent as they think they are. I normally would never simplify a film's message down to one line, but I do think film critic Mark Kermode put it best when describing Babel as having little more to say than the obvious theme of, "A shot rings out in North Africa and echoes around the world." For the record, I like Babel, though agree that its theme is rather simplistic. The film does work though, due to having an interesting narrative.

And I think the same could be said for Birdman, because for all its wackiness and "magical realism" moments, I can't quite see what else the film has to bring to the table than the obvious criticisms against the film industry: film critics are assholes, superhero films are ruining the culture, money talks and bullshit walks, and so on...

But, even in light of this one-note simplicity, there is something rather entertaining about watching the whole thing unravel in its apparent one-take, while Keaton, Norton, and Stone, among others, give great performances. In this regard, I think DarkImbecile hit it on the head: it's just a bit of a fun ride, even if it adds up to little. The film does reach a point where it begins to lose steam (I can't remember exactly where, but the first hour or so is probably the freshest), and while the ending certainly is memorable, I can't quite say it affected me in the way it probably should have, nor can I say I took much out of it on a deeper level.

Spoiler

Although the injury Keaton inflicts upon himself does give him a bandage over his face much akin to a mask he would have worn while playing the titular superhero. I suppose there is something to be said about this.

I'm interested to see if a second viewing provides anything interesting beyond the surface.

[hearthesilence]

I went it with a lot of caution. There's plenty of things that don't work for me, but I didn't think this film was a bad at all. A bit of a mess, but a charming one, at least for me. For starters, there were plenty of shouting matches, but I don't recall it being an endless stream of shouting the film's themes as others made it out to be. It seemed pretty organic to the frustrating turns built into the basic plot (and expected with that line of work).

I can understand the problems people had with the theater critic, but I thought they were easily glossed over - in fact a lot of bumps and hiccups were easily glossed over simply by the film's style. One advantage of the "one take" illusion is that in incorporates a rush into the movie - you're constantly pushed through the film, and because it keeps moving, I never felt like it sank with any of its missteps.

The film also felt more ambivalent and self-deprecating that some made it out to be. Questions on artistic validity and the "state of cinema" (with references to the current comic book craze) are also countered by questions of vanity, the fallibility of everybody involved (especially of the most reliable and hailed performer in the production), and the very real possibility that the show they're putting on is too problematic to be any good. I suppose the ending of the film would suggest a critical consensus on the play they've staged, but in retrospect, even that may be an unreliable consensus….

Spoiler

…does one critic really determine everyone's view because hers is the only that matters? Or is it a misguided consensus colored by the shooting that occurred, and not the actual quality of the play? Regardless, the film may be dumping on comic book franchises, but it seems aware that supposed antidotes to such drivel can be equally bad in their own way, if not worse.

The downside of all this is that the film can feel too conflicted or confused. It doesn't all come together, and it's possible the director didn't have a firm grasp on what he was doing, but it does certainly feel like he's invited us all to laugh at a lot of things that are actually by design ridiculous.

[matrixschmatrix]

It's true enough that there's a lot of backfilling and self-countering in the movie, but the one idea that is repeated over and over again and borne out by the finale, and doesn't appear to have any irony to it, is that what Keaton's character is trying to do is 'brave', 'ballsy', bringing the blood and thunder back to theater, etc- and if one believes that, then a lot of other things (the centrality of the critic to Broadway life, the relative cultural value of theater vs blockbuster movies, the importance of ACTING, etc.) seem as though the movie ultimately believes them wholeheartedly as well. It feels to me more like it's trying to do a 'this flawed group of people come together and make something REAL, man, something that MATTERS' than it is undercutting their pretensions in any meaningful way.

[DarkImbecile]

... the one idea that is repeated over and over again and borne out by the finale, and doesn't appear to have any irony to it, is that what Keaton's character is trying to do is 'brave', 'ballsy', bringing the blood and thunder back to theater, etc- and if one believes that, then a lot of other things (the centrality of the critic to Broadway life, the relative cultural value of theater vs blockbuster movies, the importance of ACTING, etc.) seem as though the movie ultimately believes them wholeheartedly as well. It feels to me more like it's trying to do a 'this flawed group of people come together and make something REAL, man, something that MATTERS' than it is undercutting their pretensions in any meaningful way

Interesting... I came out of it with almost the exact opposite read: that almost everyone who said Riggan's play was brave or meaningful was (fairly transparently) lying to him or to themselves, and that anything real or important this group of people might manage to produce came about in spite of their madness, incoherence, anxiety, obliviousness, and/or pretentiousness. Just because I (and many others on this board) probably tend to sympathize with or at least understand the "cultural genocide" line of criticism voiced by a few characters toward mainstream entertainment doesn't mean I bought the "redemptive truth and honor of the theater" line they tried to sell along with it (nor does it mean I thought the film was wholeheartedly buying into the cultural genocide message, either).

I really am going to have to watch this again, because I'm starting feel like I'm a little crazy for swimming against the tide of so many critical opinions (professional and otherwise) from people I usually agree with.

[matrixschmatrix]

The first time you see Edward Norton's character talking to the critic, after Keaton has left the bar, he says something along the lines of "what he's doing takes real bravery"- immediately after we see him treat Keaton like garbage. He's obviously not lying to protect Keaton's feelings, and it wouldn't really make any sense for him to be lying to himself there, as he has no real investment in the play. It's the capper for the scene, too, which makes it feel as though the movie is giving real weight to the idea.

[djproject]

I saw this a few days ago. Overall I enjoyed it and I felt it was right up my alley. My initial thoughts whilst watching it was: this feels like it could have been written by Preston Sturges, David Mamet and Joss Whedon and been directed by Jean-Luc Godard (the titles remind me of Weekend, the themes are not that dissimilar to Le Mépris, among many other points of comparison). This thought could also explain why others had reservations about it.

I also couldn't help but think of the Extras episode guest starring Sir Ian McKellen and its holiday special.

[hearthesilence]

I actually wasn't crazy about the credits, it felt like a blatant rip-off. It didn't ruin the movie for me, but it definitely made a terrible impression on Richard Brody…

[domino harvey]

File this under the ever-expanding I Just Don't Understand the Board Anymore folder. I loved the film, one of the best of the year for sure-- and such a wonderfully weird movie to be considered an Oscar frontrunner! But then again, I know this board has it out for Inarritu (guess he's no Michael Mann), so what did I expect... Great performances, interesting use of magical realism, and bravura cinematography put this near the head of the pack, and I suspect my estimation may rise on repeat viewings. This strikes me as another Art with a capital A film, with something to say about the industries of performance (filmed and theatrical), and is an art film that for a nice change of pace the critics and Academy are actually taking notice of, and yet it gets eaten alive for reasons I'm still not really buying. Oh well, I hope it fucking sweeps.

[The Narrator Returns]

I loved it as well, it hit that full-blown subjective spot for me (hence why I haven't said anything about the film until now) to the point that I practically floated out of the theater. I didn't find it pretentious in the least, I wasn't bothered by the critic (who actually made some good points about Riggan and his narcissistic motives for doing the play, this is hardly a Lady in the Water-esque work of a crybaby), I just found it so much fun and exhilarating. I would certainly not mind if it got a few Oscars, and as much as I previously wanted this to be Deakins' year, Lubezki's can and should not be ignored under any circumstance.

I will still never understand dom's hatred for Michael Mann, though.

[domino harvey]

I don't hate Michael Mann, I am just utterly perplexed that this board in large finds him a great filmmaker and so it's always my go-to cheap shot

[matrixschmatrix]

That's it, let's start rival gangs revolving around who likes and who hates this movie. Who's the hate side with MFunk, LQ, and I?

[domino harvey]

Birdman's side gets Emma Stone, we automatically win

[hearthesilence]

This was actually the first time I've really noticed Emma Stone in a movie - I skipped most of her films and had only known her through small roles and TV appearances, but she has a really lovely face. I may have to credit those beautiful close-ups for getting me to notice, they are pretty unique to this film. (By the same token, those same close-ups show every single day in Keaton's face. These were incredibly crisp close-ups that also had some beautiful, natural-looking light.)

[domino harvey]

Stone's hilarious and charming in her star-making role in Easy A, which is a funnier and smarter teen comedy than you might have been led to believe from the trailers, but she's definitely one of the best things in this film (playing against type).

And speaking of, the extended use of often uncomfortable close-ups makes this a film worth going to see on the big screen even more than the overall "seamless" editing. I finally understood why people talk about seeing Fuller on the big screen-- it really does something to the experience of the film to be confronted with such extreme exposure to the stars. I kept thinking "Whoever did the makeup for this film did an amazing job, because their work is inescapable"

[Dylan]

This was actually the first time I've really noticed Emma Stone in a movie - I skipped most of her films and had only known her through small roles and TV appearances, but she has a really lovely face.

Indeed, and she's by a mile the best part about Birdman (which I liked a lot). For Magic in the Moonlight, Darius Khondji and Woody Allen actually go out of their way to light her as beautiful and glamorously as possible in most of her scenes. There are shots where everybody is lit rather naturally but she's just glowing in a very old Hollywood fashion & (needless to say) is just breathtaking. That film (like this one) isn't getting the best reviews but she's giving a great performance in it.

Stone's hilarious and charming in her star-making role in Easy A, which is a funnier and smarter teen comedy than you might have been led to believe from the trailers, but she's definitely one of the best things in this film (playing against type).

After seeing Magic in the Moonlight I went through most of Emma Stone's filmography and I agree, she's absolutely wonderful and hilarious in Easy A, which also - as a teen comedy - works quite a lot better than you'd expect it to.

Spoiler

The shooting bothered me; I couldn't tell if he meant to kill himself and uh, missed?

Oddly, the only thing I could think of was how this seemed to be a nod to Fellini's 8 1/2 where toward the end

Spoiler

the protagonist Guido flees from the media and shoots himself

but in Birdman this action appears to be more grounded in reality (I believe). Another point of comparison, Stardust Memories, similarly presents an action that can be interpreted as

Spoiler

death or fantasy or nightmare or strange reality

What's different about the ending/final shot of Birdman is how

Spoiler

it's bringing a character outside of the protagonist into the "fantasy world"... unless Keaton having magical powers is not fantasy afterall. Unlike the films I cited, Birdman has nothing to do with dreams or memories, so him flying at the end does seem to actually be happening. Speaking of which, the whole business of him flying also kind of seems to be a nod to 8 1/2.

[Roger Ryan]

Spoiler

...it's bringing a character outside of the protagonist into the "fantasy world"... unless Keaton having magical powers is not fantasy afterall. Unlike the films I cited, Birdman has nothing to do with dreams or memories, so him flying at the end does seem to actually be happening. Speaking of which, the whole business of him flying also kind of seems to be a nod to 8 1/2.

Spoiler

I think the film is richer accepting that the Keaton character actually has these powers. He ignores his true gifts to indulge in a vanity project that will show the world he is a real artist, not just a commodity. In other words, he could actually be the superhero Birdman, not just play the character in a film. Instead, he uses his powers in inconsequential ways while fretting over his artistic aspirations. I found his rant directed at the critic to be pretty myopic as well, so I see the Keaton character as pretty flawed and not an easy stand-in for the virtues of art vs. commerce.

[Kirkinson]

What's different about the ending/final shot of Birdman is how

Spoiler

it's bringing a character outside of the protagonist into the "fantasy world"... unless Keaton having magical powers is not fantasy afterall. Unlike the films I cited, Birdman has nothing to do with dreams or memories, so him flying at the end does seem to actually be happening. Speaking of which, the whole business of him flying also kind of seems to be a nod to 8 1/2.

I'm not sure anything I have to say in response to this actually requires a spoiler tag, but just in case:

Spoiler

It may not be about dreams or memories, but it is about the theatrical representation of reality vs. unreality—how much of what you do on stage should be "real" as opposed to merely pretended—and I think the last shot is playing with that theme, at least in part. The whole film's shooting style is very much constructed around this point, in that it employs a technique—the long, unbroken take—that is traditionally used to heighten the viewer's sense of reality and immediacy by letting events unfold in "real time," but it allows these seemingly unbroken shots to jump through hoops in time and space in unreal ways. The entire film is "fantasy," after all, in the same way that any work of fiction is, and in that way every event in the film is as real as any other. This is especially true when the protagonist's psyche is the subject and (in most cases) the vantage point of the work. If the protagonist can't detach "fantasy" from "reality," neither can the audience, and Michael Keaton's character in Birdman isn't even trying to make a distinction between the two—in fact, he actively tries to destroy that distinction in the end. The triumph in the final shot is that he actually succeeds.

All that being said, I'm afraid I have to borrow a phrase from Amy Ryan's character and say that while I really admired Birdman, I didn't love it. I found it very impressive, but difficult to connect to in any emotional sense. Even the sense of "triumph" I mentioned above is something I understand only in an intellectual way—it's not something I felt while watching the film or thinking about it afterward. And while I'm theoretically interested in a lot of the themes these characters are grappling with, I feel their portrayal on screen is too often reduced to just angry dick-waving over and over again. The only character who really got through to me was Emma Stone's (and yes, her performance is very impressive). The cast in general was really great, though I would have liked to see Naomi Watts get to explore herself a little bit more, as she does a lot with a character who is really pretty thin on the page. And obviously it was great to finally see Michael Keaton in a role he could really sink his talons into again.

I certainly didn't hate it, and I have no desire to call AGI a pretentious fraud or anything like that. It's an ambitious film with a lot of style and panache and some really great acting. But despite all that I just didn't find it very compelling, which is on me as much as the film, probably—like meeting someone you think is a generally good person with some interesting things to say, but not really enjoying their presence enough to want to sit down and have an extended conversation with them.

[karmajuice]

I enjoyed the film as well, and this is coming from someone who detested most of Iñárritu's previous work. It's bitingly funny and eloquently choreographed. I feel like the film has a far more ambivalent and complex perspective than its detractors seem to think. I don't think the film admires any one of its characters, least of all Keaton, but it does muster some affection for them.

I think the criticisms of the critic are entirely off-base. I despise the "critics are failed artists" line of thought as much as anyone, but it's Keaton making that argument, and he comes off way worse than the critic in that scene (who does not write a negative review of his show, regardless of what she says to him in the bar). The critic isn't portrayed in a very generous light, but who is?

It surprises me that mfunk disliked the film. I seem to recall him liking Synecdoche, New York, which has a lot of thematic parallels and similar ambitions. But I hated Synecdoche, New York for being a bloated, intellectually facile high concept mess -- the exact criticisms funk lobs at Birdman. And although Birdman clearly has its ambitions, I don't think it takes itself so seriously as all that. I don't buy all the "Capital A Art With Something To Say" viciousness directed toward it. I saw a web of contradictory attitudes approached with single-minded intensity, a mix of bitter satire, emotional earnestness, and conflicting perspectives on art and commerce. The film doesn't find anything to Say, nor do I think it tries, but I think that's one of its strongest quality.

It has flaws. The third act is riddled with false endings, and I didn't think the magical realism ever felt at home in the rest of the film. But most of the film appealed to me, particularly the more grounded ensemble work (even if the characterization does push the envelope of plausibility).