A short film would have sufficed.

Rating: 6/10 (16 January 2015)

Everything is said and done in the first scenes, what comes afterwards is just more of the same. A never-ending carousel of obsession, self-doubt, craving for admiration. Boring even with forcefully urging drums.
Sure, the serpentine, continuous camera-work puts you right in Birdman's state of mind and the drawn-out time-line heightens the intensity but I surely didn't need to feel that for 2 hours only to have no closing statement.
Everybody besides the Birdman and maybe Edward Norton's character is just a flat bystander. They are just flimsy obstacles for him to ignore. Nobody seems like a real person, the actors are all caricatures.
It may seem as if Iñárritu is making fun of Hollywood/blockbusters/self-absorbedness/insecurities/vanities but with this over-long, dare I say never-ending, torture he is revealing himself as highly pretentious.
Maybe I just can't relate to the subjects of this movie (self- obsessed admiration-seekers). I had a hard time staying until the end.