A Smoothly Divine Shot

Rating: 10/10 (15 January 2019)

2 January 2015. Michael Keaton plays Riggan, a former superhero on the big screen who made millions and still recognized by aging fans, seeking a comeback with his production of a Broadway play. With an innovative experimental use of a seemingly continuous camera shoot, Birdman offers a first person viewpoint of the behind the scene lives of selected leading characters during several preview productions leading towards the plays premiere. Birdman incorporates at a less surrealistic intensity and plot characterization echoes of Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985) as well as suggestive comparisons to Ben Stiller's Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013) and allusions to Kevin Spacey's K-Pax (2001), Robin William's The Fisher King (1991) and Pierce Brosnan's dark assassin comedy The Matador (2005). While it's impossible to determine the extent of Birdman's appeal being derived from this fresh use of the wandering camera or the fantastical imagery, only time will tell. Like the surprisingly stark set design of Dogville (2003) or Jim Carey's schizophrenic experiences in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Birdman brings its own unique style to film. The ultimate initial outcome however, is a breathtaking, immersion into a world of petty human flaws, almost humorous foibles of human nature, and of raw sensual, intimately personal experiences.
Birdman comes off like a serious version of the purely physical comedy of Noises Off (1992) starring Michael Caine and Carol Burnett. Birdman approaches its subject matter in a playfully untraditional manner that avoids the more traditional docu-dramatic or documentary presentations of Mickey Rouke's Best Actor Oscar nomination in The Wrestler (2008) or Neve Campbell's ballerina performance in The Company (2003), Kate Hudson's Best Supporting Oscar in Almost Famous (2000), or Natalie Portman's Oscar winning psychological thriller as a dancer in Black Swan (2010) but still retaining and projecting a sharp vividness of experience, projecting the viewer and immersing them into the film itself.
In brief, Michael Keeton offers the audience a more appealing and oddly enough a more strangely real Lester Burnham character played by Oscar-winning Kevin Spacy in American Beauty (1999) by offering an even broader and more interwoven context of the human experience.