Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)
Certified: 15
Duration: 119 minutes
Directed by: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Starring: Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts, Zach Galifianakis, Andrea Riseborough, Amy Ryan, Lindsay Duncan, Merritt Wever
KRS Releasing Ltd

Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu once again delivers a film of extraordinary intelligence, intensity and originality, which deserves its nine Oscar nominations. And he brings back into the limelight Michael Keaton, whose last major starring role might have been Tim Burton’s revitalisation of Batman between 1989 and 1992.

Keaton gives the performance of a lifetime. He plays Riggan Thomson, an actor who had once been a big Hollywood star and this mostly for his role as a comic book character known as Birdman decades before. Since then, he has made many mistakes in life.

His marriage to Sylvia (Amy Ryan) is now over, his daughter Sam (Emma Stone) has just got out of rehab and he is trying to reconnect with her. Financially, he is in dire straits and this due to his decision not to continue the Birdman franchise.

To prove that he still has got what it takes in show business, he takes on a stage play and along with his friend Jake (Zach Galifianakis) is putting up the production of the Raymond Carver story What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.

However, this production is imbued with problems: a stage light falls, injuring an actor. Method actor Mike Shiner (Edward Norton) is ready to stand in for him; his girlfriend and co-star Laura (Andrea Riseborough) thinks she is pregnant by him; and theatre critic Tabitha Dickinson (Lindsay Duncan) is ready to give him a negative review.

Apart from all this, he is constantly hearing Birdman’s voice and imagining himself flying and levitating. Meanwhile, opening night is just around the corner and all hell seems set to be let loose.

Birdman crosses from one genre to the other with ease, but more striking than that is how smoothly it moves from one mood to another. In Keaton’s performance, one can feel a sense of dissatisfaction with his life and hunger for fame. A sense of sadness and poignancy also permeates the film as it digs deep into what people think they are, what they believe they are worth and their capacity to do something about it.

Birdman also benefits from excellent performances from the likes of Norton, who is as enthralling as ever; Stone, who brings to the film an acting turnout beyond her years; and Galifianakis, who shows us that there are other personas he can play apart from variations of the character of Alan Garner from The Hangover.

The film’s highlights are when Keaton struggles with himself, especially when he starts to hear and listen to Birdman’s voice. It’s a dissection of a character that has been through a lot in life and the audience gets to go through his head and experience a whole myriad emotions and ideas.

This movie has a personality of its own, a voice that it wants to make heard and, most of all, it shows that there is still hope for Hollywood to come up with something different.

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