"Birdman" Never Really Takes Flight

Rating: 5/10 (11 January 2015)

Reviewed by: Dare Devil Kid (DDK)
Rating: 1.5/5 stars
A former action film star attempts to make a comeback with a Broadway production. In "Birdman" , Michael Keaton plays Riggan Thomson, a veteran film actor who is eager to rebuild his reputation. Like Keaton, Thomson is largely remembered for playing a superhero 25 years ago. And, like Keaton, he has spent much of the intervening quarter of a century explaining why he abdicated from that role – in Thomson's case, Birdman 4; Keaton, meanwhile, turned his back on Batman. Riggan had played the flying superhero Birdman three times and refused "Birdman 4," and his career went into free fall; Keaton, who, of course, played Batman twice and refused to do it a third time, and whose career — if not exactly in free fall — hasn't been filled of late with plum roles. In the movie, Thomson is heralded by the public as a onetime action hero, and is now playing an earnest, arty role in his own adaptation and stage production of a short story by Raymond Carver.
There is no doubt that "Birdman" features some of the finest work in Michael Keaton's and Edward Norton's careers, and another stellar, constant work of cinematography by the veteran, Emmanuel Lubezki, who makes each frame look captivating and frenetically eye-candy at the same time. However, the story is a hodgepodge of dangling plot threads and missed opportunities. While it is true that Keaton's protagonist carries the film, the subplots with his daughter, the lesbian affair, and the failing marriage never tie into Riggin's journey, and these sections of the film leave you with more questions than answers. Initially, the plot is straightforward enough: it's a backstage satire, set over a handful of days, as Thomson directs and acts in his Broadway adaptation in a bid for artistic credibility. The first hour is essentially a Ray Cooney bedroom farce, full of rutting egos and romantic entanglements. All it lacks is for someone to accidentally drop their trousers in front a visiting vicar. Thomson's co-star, Mike Shiner (Norton), is the epitome of strutting, method-acting excess. He is also involved in a fraying relationship with the play's leading lady, Leslie (Naomi Watts); even as Shiner upsets the production, Thomson learns that his girlfriend, Laura (Andrea Riseborough) – and second female lead – is pregnant, while his daughter Sam (Emma Stone) is fresh out of rehab and struggling. Gradually, strange kinks assert themselves in the narrative: moments where Thomson levitates cross-legged in mid air, or takes flight across the New York rooftops. Along the way, Director, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and director of photography, Lubezki, let the film appear as if unspooling in a single take. It's a nice piece of artifice; but much like the film itself, it's a superficial rather than substantial attraction.
The actors digs at narcissism, ambition, insecurity, the wages of celebrity, and the "cultural genocide" of Hollywood verge on the indulgent. "The play is starting to feel like a deranged, deformed version of myself," Thomson says at one point. Ha, ha, yes; we get it! The second hour strips back every outstanding plot point to focus entirely on Thomson's meltdown as opening night approaches. But it's difficult to engage with Thomson's plight: his character is depthless and self-absorbed, and Iñárritu's film isn't half as clever as it thinks it is.
Also, the last shot of the film seems to change the rules established by the first hour and fifty-eight minutes. Overall, while the "Birdman's" performances are a joy to watch, the story fails to have any cohesion.