"A thing is a thing, not what's said of that thing".

Rating: 8/10 (11 January 2015)

Personally, I can identify with Riggan Thomas. It hit me like a ton of bricks when daughter Sam (Emma Stone) laid him out for the has-been he appears to be - no bloggers, no Twitter and no Facebook - that's me to the bone! But there's a difference, I know I'm not irrelevant.
So I understand Michael Keaton's been busy as an actor, but to me it seems like he disappeared after the Eighties. My impression of him as a comic actor dates back to "Night Shift", "Gung Ho" and "Beetlejuice", and if I didn't have to be reminded, I would have almost forgotten that he had the Batman franchise at one time. I never thought he was right for that role, but then again, not many have been.
So the interesting thing here is that Riggan Thomas (Keaton) is attempting to revive his career after a two decade hiatus from the role of iconic super-hero Birdman, by producing and directing a serious stage play - "He's a Hollywood clown in a lycra bird suit" is the way theater critic Tabitha Dickinson (Lindsay Duncan) sees him. Riggan suffers all the roller coaster emotions one might expect from a down on his luck former star who can't quite shake the insecurity that comes with trying something new and different. It doesn't help that his immediate circle is just as dysfunctional as he is.
I've been thinking about the movie's sub-title - 'The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance'. It's apropos I think, because Riggan's passion was his mission to see the production through to opening night despite the disastrous previews and circumstances popping up to keep him distracted from his goal. Had he not maintained an ignorance or perhaps more correctly, a distance from those distractions, he might have given up entirely. There's no greater commitment than walking through New York City as a celebrity in your underwear to get to your appointed mark on time.
Hitchcock would have been proud of this film I think, there were at least two maguffins employed by the writers that wound up having no bearing on the story. First there was Ralph, the actor who got taken out by the stage light, but the bigger one was the unresolved plot thread of Riggan's 'powers' like his telekinesis. However the latter could have been a manifestation of Riggan's inner battle with his alter-ego Birdman, and the instances of his moving objects with his mind might have been only things he was seeing.
You know, when Riggan removed his bandages in the hospital I don't know what I was expecting, but the nose at first had me thinking of Karl Malden. It kept nagging me because I knew that wasn't quite right. Then, just like my first thought when I started this review it hit me. Riggan Thomas transformed himself into Mickey Rourke's Marv from "Sin City".