Feathers Of A Birdman

There is a strut to the jazz drumming that occasionally keeps time with Michael Keaton in Birdman Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, 2014).  It's sly and playful. Maybe even a little rude; maybe a little embarrassing.  But mostly, it is confident and amused.  Appropriate, as Birdman is one funny strut of a film.

II.

Riggan Thomson (Keaton) used to play "Birdman" in a popular superhero film franchise.  But that was long ago.  Now, he is acting, directing, and become heavily invested in a contemporary Broadway version of a Raymond Carver short story.  Things aren't going as he might wish.

We have been introduced to the voice of Birdman, still in Riggan's head all these years later. In a gravelly tone, it mocks Thomson as a failure, fallen from his Birdman heights.  It derides everyone and everything around Thomson too, and the vituperation is often obscene and hilarious.

Riggan himself is contemptuous of the actor playing Ralph (Jeremy Shamos) in his play.  An injury from a falling light fixture soon removes the man from the production.  Thomson won't accept it as a chance accident, however.  He believes that he caused the light to fall where it did by the use of his old Birdman superpowers.

In steps Mike Shiner (Edward Norton), as replacement in the play. Shiner is an accomplished method actor, given to arrogant riffs of improvisation. His loose-cannon riffing seems to uncork the speecher in others.  Speeches are delivered offstage by the two female leads, Laura (Andrea Riseborough) and Lesley (Naomi Watts); by Riggan's daughter Samantha (Emma Stone); and with quiet venom, by the theatre critic Tabitha Dickinson (Lindsay Duncan).

All this holding forth by a bunch of high-strung self-dramatizers could easily become tiresome.  But the talent of these actors, led by an excellent Michael Keaton, allows them to chew their scenery and have it too.

III.

Inarritu's film is brash satire, punctuated now and again with a surreal image or turn of events.  Birdman has its serious thoughtful moments too, but ultimately remains comic, even or especially when it gets harder to keep laughing.