Review: ‘Birdman: or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)’

“Birdman” is about fame and infamy, artistic expression both successful and failed, dealing with a reputation despite whether or not it is earned, and mostly it is about that point in just about everyone’s life in which they question what they are doing, whether they are doing it right, and whether or not they are failing at life in some way. For most people this is known as the “mid-life crisis,” though it can happen to anyone at any point, and it can happen multiple times. It happens to more people than not, and from the outside looking in it can be quite entertaining to watch, even if a little sad and even cringe-inducing. The misery of others is comedy to us, if only because we can relate. We just call it “dark comedy,” and then proceed with the laughs. A man in the throes of an emotional breakdown on the verge of losing everything is not funny, yet it actually is if looked at from the right angle. This is “Birdman.”

Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) is adapting a Raymond Carver short story into a stage play, to be produced on Broadway no less, and the only problem for him is that very few people are taking him seriously due to the fact that he made his bread and butter twenty years prior making a trilogy of superhero movies centered around a character named Birdman. He still gets stopped on occasion by Birdman fans asking for him an autograph. When a young kid asks his mom who Riggan is supposed to be, his mom replies, “he used to be Birdman.” That’s a burn for ole Riggan. He didn’t used to be anything. He is what he is, which is a person, Riggan Thomson, an artist, a man, a human being. He wants recognition not for what he once portrayed but for what he can due now in the present, and for some reason he saw this play as his best option. So he gets his best friend and lawyer Jake (Zach Galifianakis) to help him produce this big play and when the movie starts he is just getting ready for previews, which are the dress rehearsal performances in front of paying crowds leading up to opening night.

And during these previews, things just keep going wrong, and you get the sense that things have been going wrong for Riggan for a while. He hired his daughter (Emma Stone) as his assistant mostly as a way to help her deal with her addiction issues, so while he wants to be a good dad, he has a grown daughter being petulant and disrespectful, and he can’t really say much about it because he was an absent father during her formative years anyway, so he missed the boat on that one. Riggan also conspired to injure one of the cast members in order to replace him, and the replacement ended up being a troubled yet popular Broadway star named Michael Shiner (Edward Norton), who increased ticket sales dramatically just by signing on but then brought tons of baggage and his own problems with him, just causing more hell for Riggan. On top of that, Riggan’s ex-wife (Amy Ryan) pops up here and there to help Riggan bring up old regrets and he’s not having to good of a time with his current girlfriend and cast mate Laura (Andrea Riseborough) so it’s all just coming down around him like an imploding building.

And much of it is indeed very funny, in darkly humorous ways, in how Riggan reacts to everything going to shit, how he has mental battles with a voice in his head that sounds like his Birdman character. There’s something vaudevillian in a modern 2014 kind of way about how Riggan ends up locking himself out of the studio during a performance and is forced to hustle around the building and through A LOT of people who are apparently in the middle of enjoying a parade on Broadway so he can re-enter the theater from the front and make it into the auditorium in time to deliver his lines, much to the delight of a very amused audience. One of the best things about this sequence is how a fan almost immediately runs up to Riggan and calls him Birdman and asks for an autograph, totally missing the point that this dude is in his skivvies marching through Manhattan. He just demands an autograph and when Riggan says no he implores him to “not be a dick,” to which Riggan concedes and gives the autograph. If your average person went walking through New York City in his tight-whiteys, you best believe no one is going to let him get away with it. But if a celebrity walks through New York in his undies, people ask him for autographs and record him with their phones and upload it to youtube.

There is a surreal, dream-like quality to much of the movie, thanks in part to scenes in which Riggan, only when alone, makes things levitate and move through telekinesis, and in how most of the movie is shot and edited in a way to make it seem like one long continuous shot. Characters walk through doors and down hallways and transition to a point in time much further, skipping ahead hours if not even a day or two, like in a dream. This helps contribute to helping us get into Riggan’s mindset and point of view, how all the days are blending together for him, how he life seems to be nothing but a series of horrible things and events that he has to navigate through one after the other in succession. Adding to this is the all drum soundtrack by Antonio Sanchez, which makes the events in the movie feel more improvisational and spontaneous (you know, like jazz, man), which is funny considering it was probably a ridiculous amount of pre-planning and work ahead of time in order to make all of these disparate shots and scenes feel like one long take. Of course if you know the tricks you know what to look for to find the “ins” and “outs” of the scenes and where they spliced them together, but it is way more fun to just go with it and let the always floating and hovering camera be your guide through Riggan’s breakdown.

Of course it would be very tempting to simply dismiss Keaton’s spot on performance as Riggan as him merely extracting details from his own life, because in cause you’ve been living under a rock since 1989 and just came out for the first time and this is the first thing you happened upon, or in case you were born in the last five years, in which case you are reading well above your age range so congratulations to you, Michael Keaton played this guy called Batman in two movies over twenty years ago, and while he’s worked plenty since then, he hasn’t exactly been given a lot of lead roles or that much high profile work, not high profile like Batman anyway, so the whole Batman – Birdman comparison just has to be made, it can’t be avoided. But it also doesn’t add up, because Keaton, though fairly press shy, does not come across at all as Riggan and seems much more content than Riggan with his own life, and also Keaton has a good amount of respect among his peers, I don’t think he’s just sneered at as “simply a celebrity” at all by anyone, his body of work has always been respected, so he doesn’t seem like the type of person who would put so much at stake in order to rehab his artistic and cultural image.

On the flip side, Ed Norton’s character of Mike is definitely something of a spoof or parody of Norton’s own reputation as a difficult to work with actor, one whom the critics and audiences still like quite a bit despite how much trouble he might cause for his artistic collaborators. Mike’s first meeting with Riggan was very interesting because they start running through a scene together and Mike is immediately throwing out suggestions for edits and making changes here and there and kind of directing Riggan, despite Riggan being the writer, director and producer of the play. And when it’s all said and done, Mike and Riggan have a strong read through using Mike’s suggestions and Riggan is very pleased with the results. And then the trouble starts happening, and Riggan is torn between getting rid of this guy who is a major headache or continuing to work with someone who can actually make him better on stage and who can also put butts in seats. After productions like “American History X” and “The Incredible Hulk,” Norton does not have the best reputation, yet he’s good, very good, and he still gets work because he can and does make the projects he works on better. But at what cost?

This is a odd duck of a film, a marvelous little beauty of a character drama just riddled with all the humor and comedy that can be derived from a man’s descent to the bottom, which just so happens may also lead to the top weirdly enough. It is bold stylistically and there’s a good amount going on in this story, more to be revealed with subsequent viewings, because this thing rarely stops to take a breathe, it just barrels forward, careening towards opening night, which Riggan is going to have to do come hell or high water, and apparently both are knocking on the door of the theater like the two rejected horsemen of the apocalypse. And who is here to fight them off? None other than “Birdman.”