{"id":5823,"date":"2014-11-21T16:40:41","date_gmt":"2014-11-21T20:40:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arts.umich.edu\/ink\/?p=5823"},"modified":"2014-11-21T16:47:04","modified_gmt":"2014-11-21T20:47:04","slug":"birdman-at-the-michigan-theater","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/2014\/11\/21\/birdman-at-the-michigan-theater\/","title":{"rendered":"“Birdman” at the Michigan Theater"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"birdman\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In Alejandro Gonzalez I\u00c3\u00b1\u00c3\u00a1rritu\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s new movie \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Birdman,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Michael Keaton plays Riggan Thomson, a washed up actor who had played the flying superhero \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcBirdman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 three times and refused another sequel, only to watch his career fade and disintegrate over the years. Although I\u00c3\u00b1\u00c3\u00a1rritu insists that the story is intended as a reflection on his own insecurities, the casting is seems far too referential to be coincidental \u00e2\u20ac\u201c\u00c2\u00a0 Keaton, of course, played Batman twice and, largely disappeared from movies after turning down a third installment.<\/p>\n

We find Thomson backstage, scrambling to prepare for the premiere of his first Broadway play, which he has written (adapted from Raymond Chandler\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) and is directing and starring in. For Thompson, this is a last ditch attempt at legitimacy and relevance, an effort to salvage his sadly diminished reputation (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a trivial pursuit card,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he moans) by establishing himself on the stage.<\/p>\n

The deep mess of Thompson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s personal life is quickly revealed through interactions with his cast and crew as they clamber to prepare for the three opening previews: his girlfriend Laura (Andrea Riseborough) reveals that she is pregnant, his ex-wife visits and makes tragicomic, regretful allusions to their chaotic shared history, his daughter Sam (Emma Stone) has recently emerged from rehab and works as his sulky assistant, her presence serving as a frustrated living rejoinder to her father\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s self-centered career obsession.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, a falling light fixture immediately knocks out Thompson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bumbling lead actor, and he must replace him with the conceited but talented Broadway star and method actor Mike Shiner (a brilliantly overbearing Edward Norton), whose histrionics threaten to derail both the show and his relationship with the lead actress (Naomi Watts).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

While the camera weaves through the labyrinthine backstage (a set artificially crafted on a soundstage to make the halls appear narrower and more claustrophobic), catching glimpses of the increasingly entangled cast arguing, flirting, smoking and rehearsing, the frazzled Thomson retreats to his sparse dressing room, where he monologues to himself in the disembodied voice of Birdman, levitates, and moves objects with his mind (generally to smash them). “Birdman” never decides whether Thompson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s powers are \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcreal,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 even as our hero eventually flies through the city streets and conjures up blockbuster style explosions with crazed despair\/delight. The surreal conceit works largely because Keaton\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s intense, personal performance anchors us to the fantastic: Keaton\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Thompson is by turns brokenly self-reflective and fiercely manic, both\u00c2\u00a0burned out and crazily sustained by the mission to perform.<\/p>\n

Much like the occasional fantastic departures from reality in Louis C.K.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\u00c2\u00a0Louis<\/i>, whether or not we think the fantastical moments in Birdman are taking place in Thompson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s psyche or actually happening, we follow because we understand how the preoccupied mind can inadvertently project itself outwards, how weirdly personal the world can get when we accidentally experience it through the lenses of our own consuming inner messes. At one point, as Thompson stumbles drunkenly down the city street, the homeless man who has been ranting about God in the background turns to Thompson as he passes and makes the plea of an auditioning actor \u00e2\u20ac\u201c did that sound good? Should I try it differently?<\/p>\n

Though \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Birdman\u00e2\u20ac\u009d explores deeply personal themes (aging, relevance, legitimacy of different art forms, parenthood), it does so with a flashy stylistic melding of the theatrical and cinematic: in constant motion, the camera follows the cast through the theater hallways in a series of lengthy, carefully staged and choreographed takes, which I\u00c3\u00b1\u00c3\u00a1rritu has spliced together through a mix of clever editing and CGI to create the illusion of a single, long take. The style isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just an impressive gimmick \u00e2\u20ac\u201c \u00c2\u00a0the perpetual motion of camera and actors creates a rattled, exhilarating energy, while quietly evoking the foreboding feeling that Thompson has lost control of his personal life and his art. Antonio Sanchez\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s excellent, sharp percussive score keeps the feverish energy up as the show\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s previews go comically wrong, conflicts between characters come to a head only to get weirder, and the narrative practically spirals towards opening night.<\/p>\n

By the time I exited the theater I was wound up and mildly exhausted, but also soothed by the lingering, poignant catharsis that \u00c2\u00a0comes from watching a truly great comedy. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a serious feeling, mostly because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one of the basic bummers of being human that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to be periodically, upsettingly disrupted from the necessary assumption that we are Important by the basic suspicion that life might just be completely ridiculous. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Birdman,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d centers around this deep, tragic need to be important, acknowledging that we are ridiculous but endearingly so, invoking serious empathy with the flailing ex-superhero, making us laugh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Alejandro Gonzalez I\u00c3\u00b1\u00c3\u00a1rritu\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s new movie \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Birdman,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Michael Keaton plays Riggan Thomson, a washed up actor who had played the flying superhero \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcBirdman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 three times and refused another sequel, only to watch his career fade and disintegrate over the years. Although I\u00c3\u00b1\u00c3\u00a1rritu insists that the story is intended as a reflection on his own insecurities, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":205,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5823"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/205"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5823"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5827,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5823\/revisions\/5827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}