Birdman (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2014)

[Shrew]

Having just gotten around to seeing this, I had a pretty mixed reaction. Technically, this is a terrific piece of cinematography with some great performances (Keaton and Stone are excellent, Norton is hilarious and his actor with mixed up notions of realism is perhaps the best thing in the film, Galifiankis a welcome if not profound presence, and Ryan, Watts, and Riseborough all do well with their underdeveloped parts). I found it often funny and occasionally poignant and even intelligent. And yet if left a frustrating, bitter taste.

For one, the whole thing is pitched at two histrionic levels: yelling and restrained yelling. Keaton yells a lot. His actors yell a lot. His friend and stage manager yells a lot. His daughter yells a lot. His gruff-voiced vulgar alter-ego/hallucination yells a lot. Some random crazy guy on the street yells really loudly for a bit. Occasionally the pitch rises with some fists or explosions. It does drop for a few all-too-brief scenes of quieter conversation between characters, but even then, the banter between Keaton and Ryan or Norton and Stone always comes circling back to the clipped tones and vulgar insults of the rest of the film. Even the "magic" scenes are accompanied by gravelly-voiced profanity. Histrionics are inherent in a film about performance and actors, but relentless pounding of the same damn drum is exhausting after an hour.

But the last act was what really did me in. I didn't mind the fight with the critic (she's no more absurd or shrill than everyone else here, though like matrix said, her anti-Hollywood protectionism of Broadway feels like an anachronism), but Keaton's final act on stage and the subsequent impact are awful, manipulative, and muddled. It all feels senseless and cheap and unearned, the gravity of the sequence seemingly convinced its hit on something satirical and profound, but offering only a hollow shell of well-worn cynicism. In the end, the critic's ultimate review ends up being a far greater slander against criticism than her promise to kill the play unseen.

That said, as much as I disliked the film (and mainly due to the last act), it's not something I'd hate to see win most of the awards, even for best picture or AGI's directing, as its a stunning and ambitious achievement, if nothing else. But I really hope it doesn't win Best Screenplay.

[AtlantaFella]

But the last act was what really did me in. I didn't mind the fight with the critic (she's no more absurd or shrill than everyone else here, though like matrix said, her anti-Hollywood protectionism of Broadway feels like an anachronism), but Keaton's final act on stage and the subsequent impact are awful, manipulative, and muddled. It all feels senseless and cheap and unearned, the gravity of the sequence seemingly convinced its hit on something satirical and profound, but offering only a hollow shell of well-worn cynicism. In the end, the critic's ultimate review ends up being a far greater slander against criticism than her promise to kill the play unseen.

I am of the opinion that Keaton's character

Spoiler

actually expired on stage and that the final scene is his dying fantasy. Note the several unlikely elements such as the implanted, quickly-healing nose, the 80k+ Twitter followers, and especially the glowing review. This theory also easily integrates the final glimpse of the daughter looking skyward.

[knives]

File me alongside Dom. This is definitely one of the best films in what turned out to be a fairly daring year for American cinema. Lubezki obviously demands a lot of credit for the film to the point where his camera might as well as be co-author, but should also be praised for the surprising amount of subtlety that he develops his ideas with. No one else I went with noticed the lack of visual edits and even for me the strange tendency for close ups and grid movement worked amazingly well as an emotional enhancer. It also helps a lot with the overwhelming feeling of subjectivity.

Spoiler

For all we know the entire film may be an illusion with him having died with the jellyfish which fairly smartly recall La dolce vita. Certainly at least the second meeting with the critic is just a reflection of his psyche which answers for me the problems everyone else is squawking about her. Even if though for whatever maddening reason we should take her as anything but a manufacturing of his insecurities the film doesn't seem to insist on her or any character of being representative for the whole of their role. That's just not how this sort of story works.

[domino harvey]

Original ending featured Johnny Depp, had to be (wisely) scrapped after Depp wasn't interested (SPOILERS for the film's actual ending throughout article)

[mfunk9786]

Words can't express how much better that ending is

[swo17]

I don't do relevant films anymore.

[knives]

Words can't express how much better that ending is

I don't think it is necessarily better or worse. Just that it emphasizes in greater detail one aspect of the film over the other. I could see how someone who primarily views or loves it as a showbiz satire preferring that ending, but if you're like me and find the film more interesting as an exploration of Keaton then the ending we have seems more valuable.

[FrauBlucher]

I got around to seeing this last night, especially in light of Alejandro González Iñárritu winning the DGA award. The film was not what I expected (I try to avoid reading too much about films before seeing them). It was darker then I expected and had a biting satirical quality aimed at the industry that is falling over backwards to congratulate it. The culmination will probably lead to winning a bunch next week.

I liked it, but it didn't blow me away. I think it lost me towards the end, which felt anticlimatic and left me emotionally unfulfilled. However, the performances were great and carried the film for me. Casting Keaton was a stroke of genuis. And the camera work by Lubezki made it feel like a play within a play. Very stellar and he could very well win best cinematography at Oscars and the ASC award.

[hearthesilence]

I liked it, but it seems less inspired the more I think about it, partly because its best ideas seem lifted straight out of Godard's work. (Think about the casting in Alphaville, or really any of his films.) They kind of acknowledge this - the credits are a dead giveaway - but to be fair those same ideas are still very effective in this context. It's too bad Depp didn't agree to that hilarious ending, what they have now seems kind of limp.

[mfunk9786]

a stroke of genuis

I love you, Frau. This is the best possible time for a typo, though.

[FrauBlucher]

Those 'smart' words always give me problems.
Thanks for the love, mfunk, and return in kind.

Hearthesilence, thanks for the Godard connection. Didn't think of that but I see it now.

[copen]

it's nice to see that the director has a sense of humor. his other films are so depressing. all i remember about Babel is cate blanchett lying bleeding from a gunshot wound with brad pitt kneeling over her for what seemed like the entire duration of the movie.

[domino harvey]

Limited edition print available at Bottleneck Gallery (nearly sold out already)

[domino harvey]

And this one was shown to me by one of my students:

[Jeff]

I wasn't a fan of Birdman, but I love that it spawned this.

[domino harvey]

Official Birdman action figure commercial

[domino harvey]

Limited edition print available at Bottleneck Gallery (nearly sold out already)

For the next eleven hours you can get this on a t-shirt at TeeFury

[zedz]

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 think that was me, long, long ago - it really struck me when I saw Shock Corridor in 35mm.

I just caught up with this film last night, and enjoyed it despite some grinding annoyances from the script, specifically the notions about the gullibility of critics and the public, and the quaint ideas about supposedly avant-garde art in the final act that are as gauche as their cousins in films like Pret a Porter. I don't doubt that Thomson's stunt would have converted into instant social media notoriety, and thus great commercial success, but it's kind of silly and self-flattering to assert that it would also disengage everybody's critical faculties and convert the Big Bad Critic into an entirely different kind of hypocrite. And the film's punchline is pseudo-profundity of the most disingenuous kind.

That said, the film's energy and invention were infectious enough to keep things bubbling along, and the performances are so insanely committed that they add another dimension of pleasure to the film. It's certainly heartening to see a film as unusual and creative as this getting major awards recognition.

[Plissken Boon]

People - Birdman is a DREAM ... that's why it's shot in one continuous take - THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE = DREAM

A disfigured man (who stands on corners in Hollywood hiding his disfigured face behind a Lycra Birdman costume, having his photo taken with tourists) is having a DREAM while he is undergoing facial reconstruction - the whole movie is a dream!

BIRDMAN is about overcoming facial disfigurement (he's also blind!)

[flyonthewall2983]

That's one way to consider it.

[worriedfire]

People - Birdman is a DREAM ... that's why it's shot in one continuous take - THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE = DREAM

A disfigured man (who stands on corners in Hollywood hiding his disfigured face behind a Lycra Birdman costume, having his photo taken with tourists) is having a DREAM while he is undergoing facial reconstruction - the whole movie is a dream!

BIRDMAN is about overcoming facial disfigurement (he's also blind!)

Well, every interpretation is valid as long as one can motivate it. I'd love to hear what led you to this conclusion.

[therewillbeblus]

When I first saw this in theatres I was blown away, and for the next several nights had the rare experience of dreaming vivid dreams, surreal ventures in wild single shots like the film. After sitting on it for a few days I decided that it was as emotionally and philosophically empty as all of Iñárritu’s work. Now I don’t think that’s fair, because I was looking for a movie that this wasn’t trying to be. What I perceived to be shallow emotional realizations are more powerful today when seeing these half-measured insights as far more authentic than the “deep” ones of artificial constructed dramatics. And yet this is that too, but that's the point the film embraces.

The aims are much more in line with the eclectic frenzy of existential ping pong that makes up someone like (a tempered and organized) Godard’s work rather than that of purely reflective self-awareness like Boyhood. The awareness extends to relationships but also inward to solipsistic and selfish aspirations; and let’s not forget about method acting, filmmaking, the whole artistic process itself. Meeting the film on its own terms, I'm more aware than ever of the conceptual strengths that make it successful- specifically that Iñárritu takes a reverse approach to Godard’s search for the real through the artifice, using a continuous shot rather than jarring editing; yet with fantastical infused ‘reality’ and Bretchian touches like the reveal of the percussion into the frame, all taking Godard’s tools and manipulating them into new ideas.

Of course the entire film also functions as an ultra-melodramatic play, or the opposite in a Carver story that finds elusive depth in the banal. This is a film where characters are wearing their emotions on their sleeves to absurd degrees, swaying between subverting and delivering expectations. Keaton's wife makes a declarative statement about why their marriage ended ("Just because I didn't like that Goldie Hawn movie doesn't mean I didn't love you") which is hysterical, campy, and puncturing in its directness, all at once; while Norton's response to why he said Stone has a nice ass couldn't be more honest and movie-boring, which makes it fascinating (and then of course, the follow up is back to movie talk, called out as such, and welcomed because the connection is genuine). The fusion of reality and fantasy seems obvious when they switch but the method is nebulous. Authentic exchanges in a bar are followed by a dramatic speech that he will "risk everything" tomorrow night, and a father-daughter argument encapsulates real emotion but through dramatic speeches rooted in the theme of selfishness. Are our forms of expression just too limited in translating the ineffable? Are we destined to be ignorant, and can only choose whether to see this as unbearable or virtuous? This a film about ignorance that doesn't blink for a second, refusing to ignore a single detail, a dream that feels like reality or reality that slips into dream. Absurd, surreal, striking, and frank.

I love Edward Norton’s character, playing the profiled version of himself and his difficult, controlling reputation, in a courageous self-aware performance that is inspired ironically due to its based source of inspiration. The way the stage is seen as the real place for him reflects his ability to exist with confidence within his own skin on the 'real' stage of life. Sincerity and deception are two sides of the same coin that reflect back and forth like dueling mirrors in this film and outside of it. Emma Stone’s look at the finale is the most wonderfully ambiguous moment, signifying the power of artifice and how a leap of faith into the magic (the subjective emotional response that Godard assigns as meaningful truth for audiences) is authentic when it affects us to the point of drawing such a response. It’s not only the power of art to transform harsh reality and imaginative thirst into significance, but that of a man’s life and all that he is - a sum that is greater than his surface level faults - emerging as a collective beautiful energy that mimics God in its vast complexity of spirit. Even the worst of people with all parts considered and bared for us to see may appear as angels, the principles of humanism stripped to reveal the blinding gold.

When I first saw this I remember being frustrated by the tackiness of the toilet paper dashes metaphor because I wanted more, but Iñárritu treats it for what it is in film and real life: an honest attempt to make tangible our existence, to cope and converse, and Keaton fires back by bringing it back to him and his worth as a father. All at once the depth is crushed with melodramatic dialogue out of a play, the opportunity to be humble overshadowed by our self-pity and existential crises, but what could be more authentic than that? Wouldn't it be a lie to pretend that we don't revert back to the self, and find comfort in the theatrics of pronouncement, let those conversations carry on reserved and self-actualized? What Stone says is true, as is Keaton's response, they're just not true in the ways we've been trained to consume each offering - separate sides of the verity our whole experience. And there is something honest about the emotions in the most romantic, bizarre, and magical fantasies, and as Godard would say the elicitation in the viewer is what gives life to the images, in the chord they strike within our own subjective realities, as well as universal feelings and the need for validation that is evoked from the Carver quote. Of course, Iñárritu likes to play jokes like the man whose credits he even steals here - especially with that divine montage of images at the end abruptly cut short into a comic scene that functions as both satire and direct parody.

Well, it's safe to say this one knocked me out, and is easily my favorite Iñárritu, who I respect immensely but don't generally 'like' - though if this is his own declaration of the restrictions and facades inherent in expression that he's been criticized for, by myself included, it would be a little unwarranted to hold that against him.