Virtual virtuosity

Rating: 8/10 (7 January 2015)

The stars of this movie are Director of Photography Emmanuel Lubezki, editors Stephen Mirrione and Douglas Crise, and drummer/composer Antonio Sanchez. They are the leads in Alejandro González Iñárritu's cinematic tour-de-force.
The acting is, as you'd expect from this collection of actors, of the highest quality. But even these major talents (and they really don't come much much more major than Lindsay Duncan, one of the great names of the British stage) didn't prevent me from taking more of an interest in how the illusion of a film made of one take was achieved. It's even beyond the achievement of Aleksandr Sokurov's Russian ARK, which really WAS in one take.
The downside is that BIRDMAN is so witty, clever, self-referential, culturally aware and artistically impressive that it drowns its characters in its virtuosity. I began to wonder whether that was the director's intention, but I just couldn't believe Signor Iñárritu would be egomanic enough to play a huge joke on his cast and his audience buy spending two hours of screen time satirising egomania. So I guess it must be about something else. Whatever it was, I missed it.
Still, it's a remarkable piece of work, and I'm very glad I've seen it.