Birdman

This week I’ve been watching Birdman.

Birdman is a story about the challenges of leaving your past behind. The film features Michael Keaton as Riggan Thomson, a washed-up Hollywood actor known for playing the comic book hero, Birdman. Determined to revitalise his stalled career, he turns polymath: financing, directing and starring in a theatre adaptation of a Raymond Carver short story. In leaving Hollywood for Broadway, he hopes the industry will view him as an artist rather than a product.

Alejandro González Iñárritu’s film has been dismissed in some quarters as an in-joke that only the film industry will enjoy, but I feel the issues are universal. We have all been in jobs that we’ve done for money rather than love. Every day people find themselves in work that succeeds in keeping them fed, but fails in feeding their curiosity. Every day people look out of the window and dream they were someplace else. Birdman looks at desire and asks: what happens if a caged bird doesn’t just sing but tries to break free? Would it enjoy flying into the unknown? Or long to retreat back to its gilded prison? Riggan’s move from LA to New York could be applied to any person’s career change and the

exhilarating fear that accompanies it.

Riggan’s fear is made manifest in the film by the character of Birdman. Birdman is Riggan’s mainstream alter-ego, a Tyler Durden phantom, that mocks him for choosing to pursue a path of credibility rather than fame. It sits with him in the dressing room, chastising him on his artistic endeavor; follows him home, reminding him about the glory he could reclaim. It’s an albatross that he just can’t shake. More importantly, the character is rich in lovely symbolism, giving literature twats like myself, a chance to splash around in Iñárritu’s metaphorical ball pool. 

The cinematography deserves mentioning too. Being set mainly in the tight corridors and compact dressing rooms of a theatre, and documenting the intense internal and external struggle of putting on a new play, it was necessary to find a style that exacerbated the mental and physical claustrophobia. Therefore Iñárritu shoots the film close up, using hand-held cameras, which removes the sheen of cinema and exposes the grit of Riggan’s labour. More than this, the film appears like it was done in one take. When you watch the film, the cuts aren’t evident; the transitions seamless.

The other performances are universally great. Edward Norton is outstanding as a method actor who has supreme confidence on stage but terrible doubts off it. Emma Stone as Riggan’s daughter is revelatory. I really liked Stone’s lead debut in teenage flick, Easy A; there she was vivacious and intelligent. The same is evident here: playing a recovering drug addict, she burns like a Kerouac candle.

On Oscar night, I’m hoping Boyhood wins ‘Best Film’- a twelve-year project that documents a boy’s life from childhood to adulthood. But if Birdman swoops in and flies off with the prize, I'll flap around the living room and do my best celebratory squawk.