Review: "Birdman"

Like his character in Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), Michael Keaton has been off Hollywood's A-List for some time. He's had some interesting supporting parts over the last few years, most notably as the police captain in the Will Ferrell/Mark Wahlberg comedy The Other Guys and as the voice of "Ken" in Toy Story 3, but you need to go all the way back to 2005's White Noise to find Keaton at the center of a studio movie.

I'm most fond of his work in comedies like Mr. Mom, Gung-Ho, Night Shift, and Beetlejuice. There's also a crazy satisfaction I get out of knowing that he played Ray Nicolette in two separate adaptations of Elmore Leonard novels (Jackie Brown and Out of Sight) for two different directors (Quentin Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh) at competing studios (Miramax and Universal). But, of course, it was Keaton's stoic performance in two successful Batman films that made him a perfect fit for the part of Riggan Thomson.

Riggan soared as Birdman, the title character of a hugely popular series of superhero movies. After leaving the franchise, however, his celebrity faded, the parts quickly dried up, and his marriage crumbled. Left with only the ghost of past success -- Birdman acts as the actor's inner monologue/alternate personality -- Riggan mounts an ambitious Broadway adaptation of a Raymond Carver story, and the movie depicts the final days leading up to the play's opening night.

Keaton is very good in the starring role, sympathetic and often hilarious. I certainly hope it gets him back in front of the camera on another big project quickly. The rest of the cast is an amazing collection of talent that features Emma Stone as Riggan's fresh-out-of-rehab daughter with daddy issues; Amy Ryan, who REALLY needs to be in more movies, as his ex-wife; Zach Galifianakis, playing it straight as his lawyer, producer, and best friend; Naomi Watts and Andrea Riseborough as his leading ladies; Edward Norton, who gives my favorite performance in the film, as the troublesome, but well-respected method actor (like Keaton, very meta); and Lindsay Duncan in a small, but crucial role as a critic who could make or break the production.

Using cinematic trickery that would impress Hitchcock, Birdman unfolds as one unbroken take until its near conclusion. Director Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel, Biutiful) and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (Tree of Life, Gravity) condense cinematic language to the equivalent of one long run-on sentence. It's a gimmick, yes, but one that requires incredible skill from both the technicians and the actors. It works, at least in part, because the locations -- narrow halls, catwalks, city streets, etc. -- and the everyday hustle and bustle of a working theater keep the camera moving and personalities cycling through this all-access backstage tale.

Ultimately, you're reaction to the film may hinge on how you feel about Birdman, the character, and the incorporation of various fantasy elements that relate to him. Some are obvious visions that Riggan has when the Birdman personality moves to the forefront, but others are left open to interpretation, like the film's poetic final moment. The character is a device, one that allows Iñárritu to depict the battle between commercial appeal and artistic integrity in a very literal way. The film, itself, straddles that line effectively, just as it teeters between its dramatic and comedic tendencies. With Birdman, Iñárritu delivers one of the more unique cinematic experiences to come along in some time.