So clever, so different, so brilliant.

Rating: 9/10 (11 July 2019)

Finally got around to watching Birdman, not really knowing what to expect. From the synopsis, I wondered if this would be a superhero film in the Marvel/DC vein and those films, despite their huge audiences and rave reviews, just aren't my thing at all. I took a chance though and what I found was a film that is very good and a piece of cinema that is utterly brilliant.
Alejandro Inarritu had made some fantastic films prior to Birdman (including Babel and Amores Perros). He would then follow it up with The Revenant, a film that earned a first Oscar for Leo DiCaprio as well as Best Picture and Best Director for Inarritu. That made it two Best Director Oscars in a row for him because he won the same award for Birdman and upon watching it, it is easy to see why.
The film itself, as I say, is very good. Michael Keaton stars as Riggan Thomson, a somewhat washed up movie star who is writing, directing and putting on a play on Broadway. The play is beset with the kind of problems that probably affect a great many plays and all the while, Thomson's personal life is falling apart and there's the ongoing memory of the career he had that haunts him, not least by the voice (and appearance of his Birdman character and by the imagined superpowers that he once pretended to have.
His urge is to make real art, rather than succumb to the wishes of his agent, rekindle his superhero role (Birdman) and take the easy money. This has to be a bit of a dig at Hollywood's propensity to take less risks than it used to. Why gamble on something original and different when you can just churn out another blockbuster, sell a ton of merchandise and make another $2bn, regardless of whether or not that latest franchise piece is even any good?
The name, the characters and the actors will ensure that it's a box office sensation before anyone has even seen it because it conforms to a tried and trusted template. Riggan could be a part of that again but no, he wants to make art and in doing so, he risks losing absolutely everything.
Keaton is utterly fantastic but he's not alone. Every actor in this film is at the top of his or her game and they are working so hard and here's why: when I say that it's a very good film but a brilliant piece of cinema, perhaps I should explain what I mean.
It occurred to me early on and once it had, I was engrossed. Remember the single shot camerawork in Fight Club? Where the camera flies through a keyhole, swoops across the sky, through a window, down the barrel of a gun and into Edward Norton's mouth? David Fincher, Fight Club's director, also used this technique in Panic Room and Hitchcock was doing it in the 60's. Well, in Birdman, that same technique lasts for an hour and 45 minutes. We don't see a jump cut until the final 15 minutes of the film. The planning and direction, as well as the acting, that must go into composing such scenes and shots is only worthy of, well, the Best Director Oscar.
Seriously, I'm not an expert, but imagine this. An unbroken scene, moving from room to room, unfolding in real time over as much as twenty minutes or more. As the scene progresses, everyone must be in position, ready to deliver their lines, knowing that if they get it wrong or screw up, the last ten, fifteen, twenty minutes has been for nothing and they must all go again. They can't say "we'll cut it there and go from that last line" because the whole scene is in one unbroken take and therefore, the whole scene must be done again.
Apart from the aforementioned sequence of jump cuts near the end (which portrays a dream sequence), the whole film is one unbroken camera shot. Even when time is moved forward to present a new scene, clever editing or time lapse is used and the camera doesn't move. There are no cutaways, cuts, fades, dissolves, screen cards or blackouts. The actors have to learn and remember huge tracts of script and get it right first time. Just like a play. Technically, this must be incredibly difficult because Birdman is a film about a play, acted like a play but shot like a film.
Everyone here deserves full marks. The cast (Keaton, Emma Stone, the aforementioned Edward Norton, Naomi Watts, Zack Galifianakis, everyone else), the crew (Emmanuel Lubezki also won an Oscar for Best Cinematography) and of course, the Director because Birdman is a compete triumph and an engrossing watch.
Inarritu himself described the idea of a full, single shot film as "almost suicidal" whilst remarking that he went with the idea because "we live our lives without editing" and that's what he wanted to convey. Boy, he really did too.
Birdman is an extraordinary film and one that I'd happily watch again and again. You should too.
9/10.