A couple of months ago I posted on Facebook the Rotten Tomatoes list of its Top 100 Movies of All Time (click here to access it), and on 28 January 2021 I watched the DVD of #89 on it, Birdman. This must surely be the oddest movie ever to win an Academy Award for Best Picture, which it did in 2015 at the 87th annual Academy Awards ceremony. Nevertheless, as a big fan of the super-hero movie genre I fully expected to be pleasantly surprised by this film. Let's just say that I was surprised by it…
Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, and released in 2014, Birdman focuses upon long-since faded actor Riggan Thomson (played by Michael Keaton). Two decades earlier, Thomson had been a major movie star, thanks to his massively successful on-screen role as super-hero Birdman – a bizarre character garbed in cerulean-hued avian attire complete with a sizeable pair of fully-feathered, fully-functional wings whose mighty pinions enable him to soar through the sky in pursuit of villains and other ne'er-do-wells.
At the very peak of his – and Birdman's – popularity, however, Thomson abruptly quit the role, and subsequently sank into obscurity. Now, he is attempting to make a belated comeback, but on his own terms, by directing and also starring in a Broadway play that he considers to be a worthy, literary production that will win him the critical acclaim that he always longed for, rather than the public adoration accorded him by his blockbuster Birdman movies.
Unfortunately, however, Thomson's hopes are not being realized, with Fate seemingly determined to thwart them at every available opportunity, and when his play's co-star is abruptly taken out of action via a bizarre freak accident, only to be replaced by a famous but infuriatingly pedantic method actor named Mike Shiner (Edward Norton), events rapidly go from already bad to even worse. Moreover, in an attempt to keep a close watch over his teenage daughter Sam (Emma Stone), a former drug addict, and help her stay on the straight and narrow, Thomson employs her as his PR, but as Sam clearly despises him and has no interest in the theatre, this plan is not working out too well either.
And as if all of these woes were not enough for him to deal with during his increasingly desperate attempts to turn impending disaster into increasingly unlikely success, Thomson is persistently mocked and psychologically undermined by a voice that may or may not be inside his head but which is apparently that of his former movie alter-ego Birdman, who alternately commands and cajoles him to forgo his futile attempts to be a worthy actor and return instead to being a mega-successful one in his Birdman role. We also see Thomson apparently performing some of his erstwhile super-hero feats in reality, such as telekinesis and levitation, but only ever when he is alone, never when anyone else is with him – so is he really doing this, or only imagining that he is? Ditto with the voice of Birdman – only Thomson hears it, no-one else does.
All very weird to say the least, replete with unresolved fantastical versus psychological ambiguity, but also, fatally, containing what proved for me to be some insurmountable, inescapable distractions. Namely, Keaton's perpetual, largely-unintelligible mumbling (he should have taken note of co-star Norton's lucid diction), and, above all else, the near-perpetual racket of a guy playing a full drum kit for no discernible reason other than to make hearing what the cast are saying even more difficult.
Why this insistent, almost incessant drumming through the film? The drummer and his drum kit are even seen on occasion – busking on the pavement outside the theatre, for example, and within an otherwise empty room inside the theatre, so it isn't just a soundtrack idiosyncrasy. No doubt this pernicious paradiddling has some deep symbolic meaning that will resonate with avant-garde aficionados, but for poor simple me it was just an ongoing aural annoyance that helped make some virtually inaudible dialogue even more so. And who thought it a clever idea for the performers to deliver their mumbling not only against an auditory backdrop of drumming but also with their backs to the camera sometimes, so that even lip-reading was foiled?
With these notable negatives added to what was in any case for me a turgid, often ridiculous plot, after watching halfway through Birdman I actually paused my DVD of it and left it alone for about an hour, in order to give my pained ears and numbed brain a chance to recover before ploughing through its second half.
This latter half was marginally better, but only because Birdman himself finally made his long-anticipated visual debut (as opposed to merely his disembodied voice throughout the first half), albeit only in an all-too-brief single scene (not counting his 'blink and you'll miss him' appearance sitting on the toilet near the movie's end...). As already noted above and also seen in this review's opening image, Birdman's costume is spectacular, especially his wings. Why, therefore, didn't he feature more extensively in the film, and Thomson's self-indulgent, self-pitying navel-gazing scenes less so?
After all, it is Birdman who is the novelty, the quirk, that sets this movie apart and defines it (hence its title, Birdman). So why utilise him so sparingly, relegated to little more than a walk-on (or fly-on?) part visually, merely a cameo appearance? Instead, we are treated to the dubious thrill of discovering whether Thomson's play is indeed a success, and an anti-climactic ending that is as disappointingly baffling as much else in this bewildering movie.
At the risk of sounding harsh, Birdman was 1 hour 54 minutes of my life wasted – as a result of which my advice to others would be to watch a clip containing the 5 minutes or so in which Birdman himself appears and forget the rest of what came across to me as predominantly pretentious nonsense. How it ever won Best Picture at the Oscars I just don't know, especially when it was up against such infinitely more deserving nominees in my opinion as The Imitation Game, The Theory of Everything, and The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Having said that, everyone's tastes are different – just because Birdman did nothing for me, that's not to say that you wouldn't like it. So why not find out for yourself by clicking here to watch a mercifully drumming-free Birdman trailer on YouTube? Who knows, it may be the very movie that you've waited your entire life for. Then again…
And to view a complete listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE!
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