Run-Amok Direction

Rating: 4/10 (27 November 2014)

Let me start by acknowledging that I have a bias against hand-held cinematography. When it is appropriate (e.g., during the beach landing scene in Saving Private Ryan, or close-up struggle like scenes from the Bourne movies), I have no problem at all. But this... About 30 minutes in, I decided that Birdman was too self-indulgent to be worth my time and left to do other things. Whatever story there was lay obfuscated behind tediously long (and unnecessary) tracking shots down hallways and staircases that seemed to have no other purpose than vent the director's ego. ("Hey, viewer, do you see what I'm doing here? Pretty impressive, huh? Look, you'd expect it to end here, but no, I've found a way to keep it going way past where Hitchcock and Welles would have stopped. Aren't you impressed? And wait, if you thought that was something, here's another one, and yet another.") Keaton, Norton, and Galifianakis were giving some fine performances, and the tension between Michael and Ed seemed to be headed in a fascinating direction, but, for me, the film-making got in the way.