'Thou shall not take Carver's name in vain'

Rating: 1/10 (26 January 2015)

It's only me?...
No, please, tell me: Is it only me that finds "Birdman" is one of the lousiest bits of over-hyped garbage to hit the screens for the last decades??...
To begin with: The movie is nothing but a "show-off". Just in benefit of the egomaniac narcissist Mexican queen-of-drama, Inarritu. Oh, wow. So you can make a movie in just one long take! (fake, by the way). Well, sorry to say, Hitch did it first. And better. Also: Why is it that it seems there's something like a competition going on between mexicans (Cuaron, Inarritu) to see who has it longer -the take, I mean-?... (That duel is still going fine, as long as they don't start a real "balasera"...)
In this non-intentional new edition of the old "Emperor's new clothes" parable, I find only one winner, and he is so despite Inarritu's efforts: Michael Keaton. A great actor, and a very much underrated one as he's alway's been, he displays here a great, muscular performance. As a matter of fact, it's the rare only instance I can remember in which a dreadfully written character is surmounted and transcended by the efforts of the actor himself. Keaton deservedly deserves all the awards he can possibly achieve for his feat.
And that's all that's good in this movie. Oh, well, maybe Lubezki's efforts to please his egotistic boss: I can only imagine how much he had to sweat to finish each long take for the glory of Inarritu without major mistakes. But that's really all. Because direction is crap (a good concept is not a good direction). Writing is crap: Really? four writers are needed to brew this inane concoction?... YOU MUST BE KIDDIN' ME!!! Rest of acting is crap, because characters are awfully written (sorry, Norton, you're also only second best to Best Egomaniac in the movie: first prize goes to Inarritu, of course).
...And, last, not least... Where's Raymond Carver in all this??... Pure pose. Pure affectation. Pure mannerism. I looked carefully for Carver somewhere hidden in between the embarrassing scenes of the "What do we talk when we talk about love" play supposedly created from his book... Couldn't spot him anywhere near. There was nothing of Carver in any of those puerile, amateurish, flat-character ridden snippets of the play the writers gave us lucky mortal viewers. Nothing of Carver's redemptive moments. Nothing of his sad poetry. Nothing of the first rank literature that cause shivers in the reader. Nothing of the true Art that, if only for a second, offers a glimpse of sense and transcendence in this nonsense life.
Not to talk about the blatant and shallow references to Fellini's masterpiece "8 1/2"...
Please... It's only me???...