Reviews of Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

CinemaSerfTMDB7.0 / 10

With his glory days seemingly behind him, former "Birdman" actor "Riggan" (Michael Keaton) is trying to prove he is still an acting force to be reckoned with by putting on a play on Broadway. He has adapted it, is directing it and has his name in lights too and just about everything he owns is riding on this. That includes his best friendship with "Jake" (Zach Galifianakis) whose patience is running out as his erratic and occasionally quite precious friend works his way throught the previews. Then a lighting mishap robs him of one of his cast and with only a few days to go before opening, they discover that most likely successors are already hard at work in the Marvel universe. Then, out of the blue, "Mike Shiner" (Edward Norton) comes onto his radar. He's an established name for theatre goers and seems keen to take on the role of something akin to his antagonist in "What We Talk About Love...". This man is a natural, indeed he is way better at improvising and imbuing his character with fizz than "Riggan" and so with temperatures rising behind the curtain; arch-critic "Tabitha" (Lindsay Duncan) just gagging to write a scathing review for the New York Times and his own family dynamic looking more like that of the Borgias, he hasn't his problems to seek. Can he and the increasingly exasperated "Jack" manage to get this thing in front of an audience? If so, what chance it will succeed or just end up running the night? If that old adage about all of life being a stage is ever to be exemplified on screen, then this could be that film - and Keaton is on perfect form. Here is a man who has come to believe in his own celebrity and also, to quite an unnerving extent, in some of the "super powers" attributed to his "Birdman" character with whom he regularly communicates! As this fairly brutally satirical exposé of many things Thespian unfolds, we watch not just a critique of some of the artistic excesses of the luvvies, but we also drill a little into the psychology of adulation and of it's toxic and addictive properties. "Riggan" is a man who has had it all but who has managed to fritter away just about everything of importance to be left with a shell, an hollow and empty existance devoid of any really meaningful relationships with people like his daughter "Sam" (Emma Stone). Norton is good at playing the foil and he doesn't disappoint here. He manages to craft a provocative and fairly unlikeable persona that seems designed to provide the ultimate contrast to "Riggan" and thereby initiate confrontation between them - but in a way that comes across as natural and often quite entertaining, rather than contrived. What's also quite effective here is the pacing. Like the lives it's supposed to be reflecting it sometimes hares along at an almost frantic pace then at other times slows to something more glacial, but Keaton manages to make sure you don't lose interest in his fate and that of his often quite perilous production. Hollywood is littered with talent that had their day in the sun and retired gently to Palm Beach, "Riggan" isn't one of those and by the end I couldn't quite decide whether I wanted him to succeed, or for "Tabitha" to let rip.