Bird­man

Since his 2000 debut, Amores Per­ros, Ale­jan­dro González Iñár­ritu has, for bet­ter or worse, explored the deep­est, dark­est recess­es of the human con­di­tion – dog fight­ing in Mex­i­co City, mar­i­tal strife in Moroc­co, tragedy in the base­ment sweat shops of Barcelona – as a means to bet­ter under­stand (or, more like­ly, attempt to keep a han­dle on) the ever-shift­ing par­a­digm of 21^st cen­tu­ry liv­ing. In doing so, he has exper­i­ment­ed with an array of struc­tures and tech­niques, from the hand­held imme­di­a­cy of 21 Grams, to Babel’s mul­ti-strand­ed nar­ra­tive frame­work. Bird­man or (The Unex­pect­ed Virtue of Igno­rance) – to give the film its full title – is unques­tion­ably his most inno­v­a­tive and uncom­pro­mis­ing work.

Much of the ear­ly buzz sur­round­ing the film cen­tred on a long-since debunked rumour that it had been shot in a sin­gle take. Instead, Iñár­ritu, along with cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Emmanuel Lubez­ki and edi­tor Dou­glas Crise, has con­struct­ed the film in such a way that it feels like one con­tin­u­ous shot. Super­fi­cial­ly, this means there are no cuts – the rhythm is set by an occa­sion­al­ly inci­den­tal free jazz sound­track, while time­frame jumps are marked with time-lapse shots. Like lay­ing out the pieces of Hitchcock’s Rope, how­ev­er, there’s noth­ing to real­ly be gained from work­ing out pre­cise­ly how this bril­liant effect was achieved. So let’s just chalk it up as a tri­umph of dig­i­tal film­mak­ing and move on.

The­mat­i­cal­ly, the film Bird­man most close­ly resem­bles from Iñárritu’s oeu­vre is his dif­fi­cult 2010 dra­ma Biu­ti­ful, which saw Javier Bar­dem play a sim­i­lar­ly flawed super­hero-of-sorts with extra­or­di­nary and unex­plained super­nat­ur­al abil­i­ties. Here the Mex­i­can writer/​director finds Michael Keaton in hair-rais­ing­ly good form as a souped-up, more grotesque and sur­pris­ing­ly sym­pa­thet­ic ver­sion of that character.

Rig­gan Thomp­son is a mid­dle-aged actor who, 20 years since the last instal­ment of the ​’90s super­hero fran­chise that made him famous, is start­ing to realise every actor’s worst fear: that he has fall­en out of pub­lic favour. With one last roll of the dice, he has cho­sen to write, direct and star in a Broad­way adap­ta­tion of the Ray­mond Carv­er short sto­ry ​‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Love’ – the in-joke for any­one who’s read it being that no-one in their right mind would think to repur­pose it for the stage.

When Thomp­son los­es his co-lead just days before open­ing night, he finds him­self star­ing at the ignominy of hav­ing to can­cel the entire pro­duc­tion. His pro­duc­er (a game Zach Gal­i­fi­anakis) is glibly pes­simistic about find­ing a wor­thy replace­ment at the eleventh hour – Fassbender’s shoot­ing the new X‑Men movie; Downey Jr’s doing anoth­er Iron Man – but anoth­er co-star, played by Nao­mi Watts, has what seems like the per­fect solu­tion. Enter Mike Shin­er (Edward Nor­ton), a cocky method man whose intense on-stage alpha per­sona amus­ing­ly con­flicts with his off-stage flac­cid­i­ty. Quite clear­ly he is not the answer to this par­tic­u­lar problem.

Com­pound­ing Thompson’s mania are his ex-wife (Amy Ryan) and cur­rent squeeze (Andrea Rise­bor­ough), one a cru­el reminder of the past he wast­ed, the oth­er a long-suf­fer­ing sym­bol of the future he doesn’t want. Then there’s fresh-from-rehab daugh­ter, Sam (Emma Stone), or the girl with the feath­er tat­too, always present yet emo­tion­al­ly dis­tant. Thompson’s worst ene­my, how­ev­er, is himself.

Hav­ing nev­er man­aged to step out of the shad­ow of his icon­ic super­hero alter-ego, he now exists as the man who ​“used to be Bird­man.” Crip­pled by nar­cis­sism and con­sumed by his need to be adored, it’s painful to see this once promi­nent A‑lister des­per­ate­ly try­ing to fath­om why he’s no longer rel­e­vant. To the rest of us, of course, it’s no won­der he’s been for­got­ten. As Sam points out dur­ing a vit­ri­olic tirade, he isn’t even on Twitter.

This is where Iñárritu’s mes­sage – as well as his choice of text-with­in-the-title – begins to crys­tallise. For as much as his film glee­ful­ly takes aim at act­ing, celebri­ty, block­buster pro­pa­gan­da, social media and the sat­u­ra­tion of the pub­lic sphere – and, with added rel­ish, crit­ics – Bird­man is not as inher­ent­ly cyn­i­cal as it may ini­tial­ly appear. The most acer­bic, pseu­do-philo­soph­i­cal and quotable lines from the script, which are hogged by Nor­ton and Gal­i­fi­anakis, feel infin­i­tes­i­mal when put next to a sim­ple, pass­ing remark from Thomp­son: ​“truth is always interesting”.

Fun­da­men­tal­ly, this is a film that bold­ly chal­lenges the idea that love is a human right, a notion we have all been con­di­tioned to believe. Through Thomp­son and the peo­ple who orbit him, we are told not only that love can­not be bought, but that some of us sim­ply don’t deserve to be loved. If this sounds like the kind of sober­ing epiphany Iñár­ritu has reached for (and some­times failed to grasp) before, it’s ren­dered less ide­al­is­tic through the film’s dark­ly com­ic tone. In one scene, Nao­mi Watts’ char­ac­ter breaks down in her dress­ing room. Sob­bing uncon­trol­lably and spat­tered in blood, she reveals that all she ever want­ed was for some­one to tell her she made it. The char­ac­ters in Bird­man don’t always find redemp­tion, but Iñárritu’s faith in peo­ple has nev­er felt more real.