Superheroes are a staple of pop culture, with some even calling them the Greek Heroes of the modern age. Marvel rules cinema, and chatrooms around the world are devoted to explaining why Ben Affleck shouldn’t be Batman. Yeah, if it has ‘superhero’ plastered to it, it’s going to be successful. Mexican filmmaker, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s latest endeavour is no exception to this rule. Extremely odd, considering that Birdman isn’t a superhero film.
Yes, it has superheroes (or should I say a superhero) in it, but it’s not about them. Not once does our main character deliver a spinning wushu kick to a faceless henchmen or stop a bank robber with some kind of ornate death ray, in fact the only time he breaks a sweat is when he has to make an agonising crawl through Times Square in his underpants with people crowding him and asking for autographs. In fact, for the majority of the running time, the setting is the backstage of a theatre. Oh it’s an odd one alright, but say what you want about this outlandish premise; this movie managed to get nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Cinematography, with good reason, too.
It follows fading celebrity, Riggan Thompson (Michael Keaton), star of the beloved ‘Birdman’ franchise as he tries to put on a Raymond Calver adaptation of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Throughout the final stages of rehearsal, and several increasingly disastrous premieres, Riggan faces adversity in any direction he turns: everyone from his own cast to the disembodied voice of the comic book character that made him famous.
As you might have guessed from the description, this film is an all-singing, all-dancing depiction for the twilight years of stardom. Riggan has put blood, sweat and tears into trying to get back a little bit of artistic integrity, and maybe some kudos too. True, it’s very obviously a massive metaphor for acting careers (they’re everywhere one minute, and then the next month people are saying ‘Dolph…who?’), but it successfully shows what many have tried and failed to in the past: how the actors feel about this. Yes, there are some nods that people remember Birdman, but it’s not exactly like they remember the actor. Riggan is so out of touch with the world that it’s almost like he doesn’t deserve recognition, at one point, his daughter, Sam (a manically brilliant Emma Stone), points out that he doesn’t even have Facebook or Twitter. He talks about artistic integrity, but then seems to care more about getting in good with the press than he does with how good he feels about the play he’s making.
Surprisingly, though, this makes Riggan a very sympathetic character. With every last ditch attempt to save his final career choice from obscurity and a prestigious New York Times Critic (Andrea Riseborough), you can’t help but root for him when everyone else is telling him to give it up. This is anchored solely by Michael Keaton’s performance, which captures perfectly the isolation, energy and surprising heart that his character has. This film is even, dare I say, a direct metaphor for his career: Batman made him famous, but after Batman Returns, he drifted for a while until this film garnered him a new audience and new critical acclaim.
As well as an astonishing character study, Birdman is also a searing indictment of popular culture and the power of the press and reviewers (ahem). Riggan’s Birdman persona (who has some of the best lines in the entire film) is constantly taunting him at how this arty stuff is a waste of time, and all people want out of entertainment is mindless action, which is referred to as ‘cultural genocide’ at one point in the film. There’s even a jab at franchises like The Expendables when Birdman says ‘sixty is the new thirty!’ At the beginning, we see Riggan accused (quite rightfully) of trying to save his neck by putting on a classy play, when in truth all he is is a ‘washed-up comic strip character’, while a tabloid journalist accuses him of injecting himself with pig semen as a way of age-rejuvenation. Later, a video posted of a near naked Riggan running through Times Square begins to develop an internet following, and Sam’s last words on the matter are: ‘this is power’.
Iñárritu’s direction is wonderful, obviously, this is after all the man who made Biutiful, however he would be nothing without this film’s supporting cast. Edward Norton plays Mike Shiner, a conceited stage actor drunk on his self-importance, and a bottle of gin at one point, who repeatedly makes Riggan’s job a living Hell as he attempts to bear all in the name of art. True, he’s the one with any real artistic integrity, but the way he behaves, and the lengths he goes to make him a soulmate of Riggan in the oddest way possible. The rest of the cast are brilliant, mind you, but it’s Norton’s comedic drive and energy that make him stand out among the rest.
Credit also has to go to Emmanuel Lubezki (who you might know from Gravity if you’re as big a film nerd as I am) for his Godly cinematography. The choice to shoot the film as if it were one continuous take is one part genius and one part perplexing. Some will get turned off by the long, uninterrupted corridor crawls from point A to point B with occasional jazz drums as the only soundtrack, however these all add to the film’s motifs of mounting tension and anger.
I’ve probably run out of space by this point, but seriously, I can’t sing this film’s praises enough. It’s the best film I’ve seen this year, and it’s quite definitely one of the best films of all time as well. If you get the chance to watch it, you should. It may not have as many explosions as Kingsman: The Secret Service, but it has twice its wit and twice its brains, which is really saying something.
Final Verdict:
10/10 -- This isn’t so much The Dark Knight, as it is the dark knight of the soul.
