i'm a big fan of alejandro innaritu because he has such a divine nameand lyrical. one of my favorite films in the history of everything is amores perros (love dogs).
what makes innaritu such a dream is that he is a first-rate storyteller of fantastical realism (a bit like terrance malick, but with more actual talking). his films usually involve many characters, inter-connected in the same place and time; often by a random encounter, accident, or situation as happens in life. his movies can be super deep and meandering such a biufiful which i bored out of during the first half. babel was much better and very humanistic in its narrative.
birdman is magical in many ways. it starts out strong, then nose dives a bit near the end, but you want to stick with it like a lover you care desperately about. it's excellently cast with michael keaton
(playing a character that is a brilliant mock on his batman days, even down to the raspy voice he used). keaton plays riggan thomson, the superstar of the birdman movie franchise. he's written, directed, and stars in a play adaptation based on a collection of short stories by raymond carver.
throw in riggan's daughter, working as his personal assistant, who's fresh out of rehab, his ex-wife, his lover, his colleagues ( the hilarious, neurotic and self-obsessed actors played by naomi watts and ed norton), and his confidant and lawyer, played by zach galifianakis (also a riot).
riggan's existentialist crisis is exacerbated by his desire to create something with meaning. what is art? what is love? aging, death, and humanity. who is he? all of this plays out as his birdman alter-ego whispers in riggan's ear preying on his self-doubts and anxieties. man, without me you're nothing!
then there's the technical tour de force of the film which seems like one continuous take as characters zig-zag throughout the theater, onto and off the stage, and the streets. the lighting shifts from desaturated drab browns and beiges of the old theater to luminous blues and and silver on the stage. the production design is full of clues and symbols. on his dressing room mirror, riggan has a note taped to it which reads a thing is a thing not what is said of a thing. this across from his altar with a buddha head and lotus and his vanity poster of birdman.
it's definitely worth seeing if for nothing else the laughs, the great acting, and following the chaos down the rabbit hole. it will remind you that most of the time we don't know what the fuck we're doing (like making a good piece of work), but we're doing it really, really well.
