Birdman is directed by Alejandro Inarritu and stars Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, Emma Stone, and many other A-list actors. It won the Academy Award for Best Picture for 2014, and I only recently saw it for myself (since it’s Oscar season and all). Is it really deserving of such a high honor like all the ‘top critics’ and the Academy says it is?
The short answer is: absolutely! The longer answer requires a lot more explaining.
Hopefully I have the skill to express how great this film actually is. It’s much different than what I usually review on this blog, so we’ll see how this goes.
Michael Keaton stars as Riggan Thomson, an actor that used to have it big in his days of being a famous superhero known as Birdman. He’s since hung up the costume and has fallen out of the spotlight, but believes he can prove his worth as a true artist with a daring Broadway production. Almost everything that happens in this film threatens to send Riggan’s play into disaster, and while he tries to hold that together, he must juggle between dealing with his daughter, played by Emma Stone, his ex-wife, and his girlfriend, all of whom are giving him new dilemmas that stand in his way.
This film is simply fantastic in too many ways to count. The acting, cinematography, and the messages about modern entertainment. The first thing that will stand out to anyone is the cinematography. It is perhaps the most skillfully shot movie that I’ve ever seen. It’s shot and edited in such a way that makes it look like there isn’t a single cut. It seems like one long take, and it’s so unbelievably seamless. I honestly don’t know how they did it as well as they did. After watching it for a while, the actors and the story engrosses you so deeply that you may start to, for lack of a better term, get used to the seamless camerawork and not focus on it so much. You’ll get too invested in the actors to pay attention to much else. Each of the actors mold into their roles and make it feel almost too real. But it’s one of the most real movies that’s been made in history.
The story is, in my opinion, one of the greatest representations of modern entertainment and executes its messages about it in the perfect way. When it comes to the film’s portrayal of a Broadway production, both with the actors and the crew, it is precisely accurate. What you see in this Birdman is more or less the kinds of things that happen behind the scenes. I have a friend that can vouch for that statement. As for the portrayal of modern entertainment, well, I’ll get to that soon in this review. One thing that you should know going into it is that there are certain things that are left to the audience’s own interpretation. There are a couple significant parts that are ambiguous and left unexplained on purpose, and I feel that it added to the experience.
There are three main scenes that completely defined Birdman for me. Without getting too deep into spoilers, I’ll do my best to explain them.
The first defining scene is between Riggan and his daughter. Throughout the film, Riggan is afraid that he’s not relevant anymore, that he doesn’t matter. He’s afraid of being lost to memory. Yet... he doesn’t understand exactly how to stay relevant, and is too stubborn to realize that the world has changed, especially when it comes to the attention spans of people. He doesn’t listen to what his daughter says about getting a Twitter page, or using any form of social media. He’s stuck in the past, and thinks that what worked back then will save him in the present, and that everything that makes people popular in modern times is stupid. In this particular scene, his daughter finally snaps and tells him how it is. One of the best quotes from Emma Stone’s gloriously written little rant in this scene is “There’s a whole world out there where people fight to be relevant every single day, and you act like it doesn’t exist.” This scene might just give you an existential crisis. While watching this, you may ask yourself, “Is this movie right? Do I really not matter? Is everything I do just a futile attempt to feel like I actually mean something?” And the answer is: yes. You don’t matter. I don’t matter. Nobody matters. Everything we do is just a futile attempt to feel like we actually matter. Did that seem like a harsh statement? Of course, but I won’t leave that matter off right there. I’ll discuss the light side of our collective futility later on.
The second defining scene is something that I’ve always had a certain sentiment about, but never knew how to word it… until this scene came along. There’s an extremely snooty and elitist critic in this film who is bent on ‘ruining’ Riggan’s career by giving his play a bad review. At one point in the film, Riggan confronts her in a bar and puts so perfectly into words the thoughts I’ve had in my mind for years. He takes a look at one of her reviews that she’s writing and calls out all that’s wrong with all the ‘critics’ of today. The best line by Keaton: “There’s nothing in here about technique, there’s nothing in here about structure, there’s nothing in here about intentions, it’s just a bunch of crappy opinions backed up by even crappier comparisons.” He also points out how all critics do these days is label things. This is SO undeniably true. Go to Rotten Tomatoes, click on ANY movie to see its reviews, and you will see only labels alongside crappy opinions backed up by even crappier comparisons. Critics don’t review anything anymore, they just label things. However, there are many reviewers out there, NOT critics, that actually properly review films, plays, books, TV shows and all the like. This is without a doubt one of my favorite scenes that I’ve ever seen in any movie. It says so much… but the third main scene I want to mention says a whole lot more.
The third defining scene of Birdman is when Keaton has even more of an existential crisis than he already was. This scene is the moment when he realizes that doing this Broadway play might not be what he needs to do in order to stay relevant. He realizes that if he wants to stay in the spotlight, he’ll have to give the people what they want. They don’t want an adaptation of some 60 year old book, with a bunch of talking and sappy philosophical stuff. They want a spectacle, with action, thrills, explosions, high octane adventure and stunning special effects. If he wants to be relevant for the modern age of entertainment, he has to be… Birdman. The most memorable line from this scene: “Look at these people! Look at their eyes, they’re all sparkling! They love this shit! They love blood! They love action! Not this talking, depressing, philosophical bullshit!” And it’s true! Just look at… well, Birdman, this very film I’m reviewing, for example! Did you rush to the theater to check it out? Did you say “Wow! This looks awesome! I NEED to see this!!!”? If you did, that’s awesome. If you didn’t, you’re just like most people. You don’t see the trailer for Birdman and freak out with joy and know you just had to see it. But you probably did freak out with excitement when the trailer for Avengers: Age of Ultron dropped. This is exactly the point that this entire film was trying to get across.
It was these three scenes that defined this film for me. But literally every scene has great moments like these. The entirety of Birdman is one great moment, and it’s definitely a must-see for any movie lover. I would say that each actor’s performance is worthy of an award, that the cinematography is some of the best I’ve seen, that the messages and story are beautifully executed and are deserving of a lot more attention. Now that I’ve actually seen the film, I can understand why it won the Academy Award for Best Picture for 2014. While it may not necessarily be my favorite movie to come out that year, I fully recognize how truly great it is and respect it a lot more than many, many others. I absolutely love this film, and I love analyzing it, so, let’s return to the topic of everyone not mattering at all that I mentioned earlier to see if I can successfully analyze one of my favorite aspects of it.
Nobody matters. Nobody is special. You’re not any more special than anyone else, and nobody else is any more special than you. What Emma Stone’s character said was true. There is a whole world of people fighting to be relevant, fighting to be in the spotlight and for people to notice them. So many people think that the more people notice them, means the more that they’ve fulfilled. The longer they stay relevant, the better chance they don’t become some lost relic. You see this not only in the film industry, but with authors, YouTubers, and other things like that. Everyone tries to be special, but nobody is. The only way anyone is matters is if they matter to themselves and to the ones they love. Look at me- I review movies on a blog that’s barely been noticed by more than 100 people. But I’m not freaking out or craving the spotlight. If there’s one thing that Birdman teaches, it’s that no matter how futile being relevant really is, as long as what you’ve done matters to YOU, as long as it’s special to YOU, as long as YOU are satisfied with whatever it is that you did that earned even one person’s time and attention, then that’s all that actually counts. That’s all that should matter. And as long as you’re happy with that, then you haven’t lost anything.
That’s my review/partial analysis of Birdman. I highly recommend this film to everyone. It’s funny, it’s deep, it’s well acted, well directed, has a great soundtrack, and well deserving of any award that it won. I would gladly watch this again at any time. Even though giving a film like this a score would be pointless and futile, I’ll give it one anyway. Because why not?
FINAL RATING: 50 / 50
STORY: 5 / 5
ACTING: 5 / 5
CHARACTERS: 5 / 5
CINEMATOGRAPHY: 5 / 5
COMEDY/DRAMA: 5 / 5
SOUNDTRACK: 5 / 5
TONE: 5 / 5
ENJOYABILITY: 5 / 5
REWATCH VALUE: 5 / 5
OWNING VALUE: 5 / 5
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