Birdman or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance [MA]

After 88 years of glamorous award ceremonies and golden statuettes, it’s fair to say that the movies in the running for ‘Best Picture’ have gotten pretty recognizable. In recent years the Academy has been on a bender of beautifully authentic biopics or sophisticatedly confronting dramas. This is why, in 2014, Alejandro G. Inarritu’s hip and cynical dramatic comedy, Birdman [or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance] was a welcome winner.

I think the ‘Best Pictures’ are the ones that keep you in your seat staring at the screen as the credits roll. This happens when a movie either stuns you so hard that your brain and body shut down or, it intrigues/confuses you to a point where your brain has to forsake other functions so as to concentrate all energy on figuring the film out. Birdman is the latter.

 Set in New York (where else?) the movie follows Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton), a has-been movie actor attempting to transcend the digital world and prove his true artistry by financing, directing, and starring in a play on Broadway. Alongside professional conflicts with an arrogant costar (Edward Norton) Thomson struggles to regain relevance within his family by mending his relationship with his estranged daughter (Emma Stone) and resurrect his career with the help of his lawyer and best friend (Zach Galifianakis). And all the while he is battling his worst enemy: Birdman, his interior critic and ghost of a career past.

Considering the candidates for ‘Best Picture 2014’, both obvious (American Sniper, The Theory of Everything) and unobvious (The Grand Budapest Hotel), it’s really no wonder that this movie came home with the cake. Birdman is a classic example of a movie where there’s a lot going on, but nothing seems to be happening. It’s this complex simplicity that stops the brain it its tracks and forces it to rewind and replay.

Imagine you’re in a cramped and darkened bar on beat poetry night. Dull red lighting, a hazy smoke blanket from all the hipsters’ cigarettes, and a guy standing on stage reciting some stylized monologue about how the world is crap and we are the dung beetles rolling it along. That’s how I felt as I watched this movie. By the end, pretention elates you because you’ve had a dose of hip culture and social critique. Simultaneously you’re realizing the depressing truths behind the performance. And then your brain starts running over all of the metaphors that you enjoyed, but didn’t really get.

“I don’t exist. None of this matters.” Riggan Thomson might spend the movie mourning his decreasing relevance, but Birdman does not have to worry about getting outdated. Only two years old, the movie is captivating and eccentric with its beatnik aesthetic (admittedly only created through Antonio Sanchez’ scatty drum score) and harsh but funny commentary on the state of the arts: the trend of cinema blockbusters (strictly superhero movies), cultural importance of social media, and how there is a postmodern irony underneath it all.

The brilliance of Birdman is not so much in the performances (though everyone in it is wonderful), but mainly in the clever and postmodern way the film is edited together. Scenes blend into one another seamlessly (or rather, scenelessly) and many shots put us in mind of other movies. Take the opening scene with Keaton in his dingy changing room in his underwear; straight away I was reminded of Captain Willard (Apocalypse Now) and his intense stares in the mirror were very reminiscent of Jack Torrance (The Shining). The film’s quirkiness and relevance, not to mention its cynicism and irony, comes directly from these shots that inspire us to think of other films. Birdman’s voice-overs are in the style of Christian Bale’s Batman (ironic when you consider Keaton’s own history as the caped crusader), Norton and Keaton’s dust-up cannot but remind us of Fight Club, and the travelling camera shots through hallways puts us right back in Kubrick’s Overlook Hotel minus the ‘70s décor.

Whether these are deliberately recycled film samples with some postmodern social commentary agenda or merely manifestations of my own cinematically overactive brain, they are nonetheless a big part of what makes this movie so great. Simply being reminded of other movies creates this cool blurring of labels and genres and suddenly this could be anything from a superhero action movie to a psychological thriller. In a film where characters devalue cinema and its artistry, recycled shots like these bring a great level of irony and humour to it.

And then we have a script where anything goes. If the allusions to other films are the metaphors of the beat poem, then the fast-paced and voluminous dialogue is the cynicism and social commentary. Between loud, angry monologues from Norton and Stone and Keaton’s soft-spoken epiphanies, it’s no wonder they all were up for the Academy Award. Such a script offers much freedom to the actors and everyone goes to town on each other during those delicious scenes of conflict. Keaton’s own self-deprecation, “I look like a turkey with leukemia”, he says as he lifts his shirt and stares at the mirror, is a line that will stay with me for a long time!

By the end of Birdman, the feeling is one of confusion but also that sense of being undeniably impressed. Regardless of the layers of complexity, which your brain only recognizes as it mulls back over them hours later, it’s one of those movies where you’re hit with the feeling that you’ve just seen something amazing. And whilst your brain may not have caught up with everything straightaway, it’ll be thinking about it for days afterwards.