The Oscars are, at best, a funny thing. Like any group that purports to canonize the arts, the Academy walks a thin line in their yearly spectacle of self-congratulation, their status as a group of individuals in flux compounding the already impossible-to-quantify business of measuring and comparing works of art. It would be impossible for them to not court controversy. Some movies ultimately suffer in film culture for their recognition at the Academy Awards, suffering backlashes by movie buffs (“Crash”) and popular audiences (“Lost in Translation”) alike, a trend that’s been magnified in an era of online “content” generation and largely synthetic controversies designed to generate clicks and ad revenue.
All of which is terribly unfortunate, seeing that it takes away from the one thing these awards at least profess to be about – the movies themselves. Enter “Birdman.” I’m not of the persuasion that it’s one of the very best films of the year, but I’m still ecstatic that something so ambitious and unconventional is getting so much attention. But, by the time you’re reading this, “Birdman” will have either won the award for Best Picture, or it will not have, and that’s how it will be largely known from then on. I prefer “Boyhood” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and “Selma,” but I’m grateful for all of them, and would rather abstain from arbitrarily choosing teams.
A win for “Birdman” would make it among the strangest films ever to take home the best picture statuette, if only for its brazen kookiness. Beneath the central visual gimmick of the film – which is shot and edited by the brilliant Emmanuel Lubezki so as to appear to unfold almost entirely in a single take, the camera sometimes swooping between the stories of the Broadway theater where it largely takes place – it’s a fairly classical story of one man’s redemption: the salvation of one jerk out of many. What’s amazing is the marriage of such formally audacious technique with an otherwise fairly accessible narrative. It’s not for nothing that the drums-only soundtrack by Antonio Sanchez is twice revealed to have a natural source within the movie.
For many who follow film culture outside of the yearly awards blitz, “Birdman” is already old hat, but in a landscape where the also-excellent “American Sniper” made more money in its third week of release than “Birdman” has overall, this year’s awards will give it the height of its public saturation. A brief summary, for those out of the loop: the film stars Michael Keaton as a thinly-veiled version of himself named Riggan Thomson, an aging actor famous for portraying the fictitious superhero Birdman in three movies.
As the film begins, he’s on the verge of opening a Broadway play – his first, and an attempt to do something meaningful and artistic. Meanwhile, Riggan’s troubles and self-doubts are compounded by his status as a not-so-great father (Emma Stone, as his daughter Sam, is the cast MVP), a prima donna actor hogging the spotlight (Edward Norton, superb), a general aversion to social media technology, and the literal voices in his head.
“Birdman,” subtitled “Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance),” is less deep than it might appear to be at first glance, but this superficiality is part of the freewheeling fun. It’s like watching Hollywood perform an exorcism on itself, striving for seriousness in the era of Marvel dominance, and “Birdman” ultimately becomes as much of its own superhero movie as it is a comment on others. The director, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, has always pushed the cinematic form, but here, he tries to blow it wide open. Awards be damned, we’re lucky to have it.
“Birdman” is currently playing in theaters nationwide, and is also available on DVD, Blu-ray, and various online outlets
Robert Humanick is a contributing writer for slantmagazine.com. Follow Rob on Twitter @rhumanick
