The obvious frontrunner for this year's award season is also uncommonly good. Too often, it seems, the movie that gets the most hype (for whatever that's worth) is also sentimental or traditional, and sometimes both. A lot of people tend to attach baggage to the Best Picture Oscar, wanting it to be timely or eternal, classic or fresh, comfortable or edgy, and so forth. My main consideration for Best Picture is how state-of-the-art it appears to be: Technically original, aesthetically fresh, pushing boundaries, and (more subjective, obviously) appropriate to popular culture. Birdman is all of these things, and then some.
I know you've heard people raving about how great this film is, and like me, you probably got a bit annoyed partly because nobody is talking about the film's plot. So what is this thing? Michael Keaton plays an actor who is attempting to re-create his career following the success of a series of "Birdman" movies in which he played the titular superhero. Two decades later, he is writing, directing, and starring in a Broadway play that opens soon and is having nothing but trouble taking flight (yes, flight). Besides his dramatic attempts onstage, our protagonist is plagued by conflict in his personal life as well, with his friends (Zach Galifianakis), girlfriend and actress (Andrea Riseborough), ex-wife (Amy Ryan), daughter/employee (Emma Stone), and co-star actor (Edward Norton) and his girlfriend/actress (Naomi Watts).
This all-star cast rocks their individual roles, and intelligently embody the world of the film as its ensemble. This is very "meta" stuff, but our actors fit comfortably into their supporting roles, just as their fictional counterparts maneuver into place around their leading man. Edward Norton and Emma Stone arguably have the most complex characters and perform them with remarkable strength, but truly all the characters (and their actors) are almost stunningly well-written and fully realized. But they aren't the only good things about this movie.
Director/co-writer Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Biutiful, Babel, 21 Grams) helms this black comedy with such ingenuity, intelligence, and skill that it is immediately understood as a consummate work of art. For all the themes and motifs we could eke out of this complex film -- from its not insignificant title to its final shot -- Inarritu directs with an eye for beauty and magic. Stunning special effects happen somewhat unexpectedly, as Keaton's character is empowered by the voice of Birdman in his head to move objects with his mind and levitate, and the heavy lighting transforms what we see on screen into a tableau of fantasy and wonder.
It's technically incredible. Besides the awesome lights, Inarritu makes the two-hour film look like a single, continuous shot. It was obviously not filmed that way, but the effect is brilliant: we get a real-time peek into a man's life. When Keaton is alone we see his secret powers, the emotions of his encounters with other people are raw and fresh, and we see his show from casting to opening night as one single episode. Inarritu plays with his own technical approach, then, in that we see many moments separated by time as one shot; in one scene we see magic juxtaposed with the most mundane of daily activities; we see more profound drama offstage than on. Inarritu is making a movie about movies, a film about theatricality, with timely references and modern theatre concerns, replete with magic and mayhem, that ultimately emphasizes the beauty, complexity, and wonder of life. This movie is, literally, everything.
IMDb: Birdman
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