Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

Recently I was invited to a random house party by these old dudes and their conspicuously young girlfriends, whose scent of last year's stripper perfume was still on them by the way, when they saw me walking down the street with an eighteen pack of the Silver Bullet. During one our many animated discussions, the home owner asked what I did for a living and I told him that I write music and movie reviews online; this led to a long blank stare and a reply from him of "Shit! Well I work for a living." Well said sir, well said.

And this is exactly the same struggle Riggan (Michael Keaton) is going through as he is trying to gain respect on Broadway with his adaptation of Raymond Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Riggan's life is strikingly similar to that of Keaton's as he used to be the character Birdman; a comic book superhero whose franchise raked in hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide. He turned down the option to be in the uninspired sequels of this movie and in doing so he essentially contributed to the demise of his own career. So now all he's left with is a divorce, a daughter whose fresh out of rehab due to the fact that he was never home, and the reality that he is soon going to be a forgotten afterthought in regards to significance within the acting community. He sees this play as his last chance to remain relevant and at the same time do something that's creative and really matters in his profession.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (AGI) makes what turns out to be a gripping and ambitious film as the entire story is shot in what appears to be a single shot format (it's not btw) where one camera is used to follow all of the characters around as they try and take on the challenges of putting together a successful Broadway play. You are taken through the ups and downs of having to replace an awful actor right before their first preview showing because he was hit in the head with a stage light; and you also experience the actors dealing with their own insecurities as they are about to live out their life's dream of being on Broadway while at the same time dealing with a myriad of issues which include on set romances, cynical critics, and just jackassery in general from people associated with the play.

Keaton does an excellent job as he shows you a range and a side of him that you've never really seen before. He came close at times when he played Bruce Wayne but when playing a super hero's alter ego you are really strapped as an actor, especially when it's in Tim Burton's cartoonish and surprisingly dated Batman. I still love that movie by the way "You wanna get nuts?!?! Come on, let's get nuts!!!" But in this movie he's almost morose as he is clearly on his last leg and trying desperately to hold everything together while it seems like everything that can go wrong is going wrong. He is constantly fighting the voice in his head that is telling him to give up and go back to making Birdman movies, and at times you are not sure what's real and what's fantasy as he sometimes allows himself to escape and enter the world of Birdman.

And I have to give Inarritu credit for giving Keaton some pretty iconic scenes, one of which includes him frantically running through Times Square in his tidy whities while people are giving him props because of who he is. I also have to give Inarritu a nod for making Birdman's voice sound exactly like Christian Bale's voice when he played the caped crusader; a kind of tongue in cheek jab at Keaton's replacement in that franchise.

Ed Norton almost steals every scene he's in as he represents the stage communities negative view towards Hollywood actors trying to make it on the stage. They see themselves as the real actors and the only ones who can truly bring art to the crowds.

In the end this movie is funny, entertaining, and depressing all at once, and any movie that can make me feel that many emotions in a two hour period definitely gets a rating of very FRESH!