Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)

While Birdman might appear to be something quite new, and indeed I can think of no other film that looks quite like it, it is in reality something quite old, the cinematic grandson of Sunset Boulevard and All About Eve. Michael Keaton plays Riggan Thomson a  kind of caricature of himself, the once successful star of a 1990's superhero franchise, now trying to rebrand himself as a legitimate theater actor with a self directed, self adapted, self stared  Broadway stage version of Raymond Carver's 1981 short story "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love". The ambitious cutthroatery and the new style performer (in this case Edward Norton's Mike Shiner's) efforts to outshine the older nominal star on Broadway is where the Eve influence comes in, while Sunset Boulevard contributes much of the desperate tone, as well as Keaton's caricaturizing himself, (unlike the Norma Desmond of the movie Gloria Swanson never entirely disappeared from film after the silent era, and was still acting into her 70's, while Michael Keaton has long been an established dramatic actor, and will likely even win an Oscar for this role). In short this is an actors film about acting, and its rather meta, so even though I was rather impressed with it I don't know if I want it to win a best picture Oscar, because that would just seem like Hollywood patting itself on the back for just being Hollywood, I mean even more then it usually does.

The film has a great supporting cast of great character actors, many of them with some ironic background in the world of superhero movies or other big budget explosion leaden Hollywood fair, Edward Norton (The Incredible Hulk), Emma Stone (The Amazing Spider-Man), Naomi Watts (King Kong), even Lindsay Duncan (Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace). The film is also done in what appears to be one long, impossibly complicated, single take, so the editing is great. We have 'the meta' not just in this being a film about actors acting sense, but in Riggan's repeated conversations with his super hero alter ego Birdman, and in his self perceived manifestation of superhero powers such as levitation, telekinesis, and even flight. This movie is about actors giving all they have, even when they don't have a lot, to a role, it's about the cost of celebrity on a life and career, shameless self promotion, and serendipity. Above all perhaps its odd, I understand people not liking it, its hard to know what to grab ahold of with this piece, but for me everything here somehow comes together and I left deeply impressed, if a tad confused. So if your up for an unique examination of a classic actorly theme, namely actors themselves, you just might really enjoy Birdman. ****