Movie Review: Birdman

Many people suffer from “negative self-talk,” which is a critical voice in their heads that says things like, “Why try out for the football team when you know you’re a loser?” Or, “You’ll never be a Class-A musician, so just give up your dream.” Or, “Your acting is horrible and the only one who doesn’t know this is you.”

This kind of “negative self-talk” is one of the central themes in Birdman, or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), starring Michael Keaton, Emma Stone, Edward Norton, Zach Galifianakis, and Naomi Watts. The film won this year’s Academy Award for Best Picture. 

In Birdman, Michael Keaton plays a man named Riggan Thomson, a washed-up film actor famous for playing a superhero (Birdman) in a series of very successful films many years ago. Riggan is shown attempting an ambitious comeback to write, direct, and star in his first play on Broadway, and it is not going the way he expected.

His daughter is unhappy as his personal assistant, he has production and public relations problems, he has girlfriend problems, but his main antagonist is actually Birdman himself. Riggan hears the near constant, droning voice of Birdman telling him that he is wasting his time and that he should give up this Broadway nonsense and come back to the superhero role that made him a star. The film examines Riggan’s near-crippling self-doubt, it satirizes the Broadway theater culture, and it features the desperation and hope of actors who just want to say, “I acted on a Broadway stage.”

While Birdman could have been filmed conventionally, the filmmakers chose the more difficult path. Similar to Alfred Hitchcock’s movie, Rope, Birdman is shot as if it was mostly one take. The camera follows characters up and down stairs, all around the stage where the play will take place, on the streets outside, up on rooftops and back again, and it’s all very impressive and seamlessly done. One of the joys in this film is to figure out where the edits are located. I assure you, it’s not as easy as it is to spot in Rope.

Best Director Oscar winner, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, and Best Cinematography Oscar winner, Emmanuel Lubezki required the cast and crew to film very long scenes without error. This involved many rehearsals since some scenes were up to fifteen minutes in length. It required a constantly moving camera, multiple settings, multiple actors, tons of flawlessly performed dialogue, and every actor and every crew person had to hit their marks perfectly, or they had to start the entire scene over again. 

It’s this combination of acting excellence and technical prowess that impressed the Academy enough to give it their highest award.

Michael Keaton is simply superb as a tortured Riggan, who we see slowly descending into madness. This really is a monumental acting performance by Keaton, as he is in most of the film’s scenes, and he is believable throughout. You can feel that this might be his character’s last shot at attaining whatever he thinks is “success,” and he sees it slowly slipping away from him. Watching Keaton’s journey through this movie, even without the technically complex element, was a truly fun experience.

Edward Norton’s role as a Broadway veteran named “Shiner” is also a standout performance. Norton plays the character with uncommon levels of confidence, but we see brief glimpses that this might be a carefully crafted facade. Other noteworthy actors in the film are Emma Stone and Naomi Watts, as Riggan’s daughter and one of the play’s stars, respectively.

Birdman was impressive on a number of levels. It has awesome acting, a great script, technical excellence, and it’s about the inner-workings of the acting profession, which the Academy always loves. So, it makes perfect sense to award Birdman with Best Picture.

While I can’t say that Birdman would have been my vote for Best Picture, it’s clearly a film-making achievement worthy of the top award because the filmmakers dared to take the more difficult path to make a good movie great, and it succeeded to produce a really amazing film experience. It’s a movie that film students will be studying for many years to come, and I can’t truly say that about all of this year’s Oscar nominees.