Film review: Birdman

The multi-Oscar-nominated Michael Keaton starrer is about the stunning performances of the leads, every one of whom turns in a stellar interpretation of a group of pretty unpleasant people whose sanity hangs, at best, by a thread.

Michael Keaton, left, plays a washed-up actor trying to stage a play to revive his career, while Edward Norton, right, plays a schizophrenic actor who arrives to save the production. Courtesy Fox SearShow more

Birdman

Director: Alejandro

González Iñárritu

Starring: Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, Emma Stone, Zach Galifianakis, Naomi Watts

Four stars

Thanks to nine Oscar nominations – including best actor, supporting actor and supporting actress – Birdman arrives in UAE theatres on Thursday, January 29, already well-publicised. Michael Keaton stars as Riggan Thomason, an actor whose success in a superhero franchise (Birdman) comes to an end when he quits after the third instalment on artistic principle. Keaton himself, of course, quit as Batman after Tim Burton's first two instalments, and his career has never quite reached the same heights since.

So far, so self-referential.

Edward Norton portrays a schizophrenic, drunk actor named Mike Shiner, who arrives to save Keaton’s egotistical stage adaptation of a Raymond Carver short story that aims to resurrect his career, re-establish his self- respect and make him loved by audiences all over again. Emma Stone, meanwhile, turns in a powerful performance as Sam, Thomason’s recently out-of-rehab daughter who seems to see through the vaingloriousness of her father’s efforts better than anyone.

It’s a film that could easily go one way or the other. It could be a self-important treatise on the importance of the actor and theatre as catharsis, or it could hold its own. Luckily, it holds its own.

Although the trailer shows helicopters bombarding New York streets and Birdman flying around being a typical movie superhero, that’s not really the point, and it’s about two minutes of the film. Birdman doesn’t actually exist. He’s a construct of Keaton’s decaying sanity who taunts and dispa­rages our hero from deep within his fractured subconscious.

Most of the film is about the stunning performances of the leads, every one of whom turns in a stellar interpretation of a group of pretty unpleasant people whose sanity hangs, at best, by a thread.

The film is shot in what appears to be almost one continuous take, adding to the disconcerting sense of foreboding as the insanity unfolds – there are virtually no cuts or fades. Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki is no stranger to plaudits – he won an Oscar for 2013's Gravity – but if he'd known he could get them using just one camera and one continuous shot, he might have done this years ago. The result is both unsettling and great to look at, considering it appears to be such a simple approach.

Birdman owes a visual debt to Hitchcock's finest single-camera moments, and adds a disquieting jazz drum soundtrack every time there's a hint of looking somewhere else, just to keep us trapped with Keaton and his demons. Each lead is essentially a failing, depressed and largely worthless example of humanity, and throughout the film they seem to prove themselves more so. Perhaps Stone at the end leaves us with hope, but it's not a cheery number, despite essentially being a comedy.

It’s a great film, as evidenced by the Oscar nods, though that could partly be down to a relatively weak field of competition. But that’s not to take away from what was undoubtedly one of the best films of 2014, or one of the best films of early 2015 for UAE audiences.