What we talk about when we talk about acting

It’s not easy being a superhero. As Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) prepares to sink all his money and Hollywood reputation into a Broadway adaptation of a Raymond Carver short story, he battles with doubts, fears, overpowering ego and possibly his own shredding sanity.

Back in the ‘90s, Riggan was a Hollywood box-office god: his Birdman superhero franchise raked in a billion dollars in ticket sales. But after backing out of Birdman 4, his stock has fallen; he’s divorced, his daughter Sam (Emma Stone) has been in rehab, and his lawyer Jake (Zach Galifanakis) is just trying to keep the ship afloat as Riggan enters final rehearsals for a stage version of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Riggan is making a last stab at art at a time in his life when looking within and asking such questions can be fatal and life shattering.

But lest you worry, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman is a comedy. A dark one, to be sure, but one that takes you on a trip through the psyche as off-kilter and unnerving as Being John Malkovich.

Keaton is practically an Oscar shoo-in as Riggan, giving a career best performance as he walks the tightrope of his emotions in a film that is dedicated to unbroken takes: the camera glides and swoops from scene to scene, never cutting away from character to character. What results is the chronicle of a man’s disintegration — and reintegration — happening in real time.

When a new second lead actor is called in (Edward Norton as Mike Shiner), the movie becomes a dialogue about art versus commerce, Broadway versus Hollywood, truth versus fiction. That Mike — who cockily tells newcomer Riggan, “This is my town” — begins to show signs of sketchy integrity as well as unexpected tenderness towards Sam is just one of the fun twists in the screenplay.

What keeps Riggan running is a voice in his head — or so he says. It’s the larger-than-life character he created onscreen in the ‘90s, now offering egotistical commentary on every choice he makes in life. “People, they love blood,” says the electronically-altered voice of Birdman (which can’t help but remind you of Keaton’s old role as Batman). “They love action. Not this talky, depressing, philosophical bullsh*t.”

It doesn’t help that Riggan has been up for three days straight, which may (or may not) explain why he can suddenly levitate objects — and himself — with his mind.

Emma Stone and Ed Norton flirt with disaster on Broadway.

Meanwhile, Mike maneuvers to get himself front-page New York Times Arts Section press as Riggan struggles along as a Page 11 joke for even launching such a play in a city of cultural vultures. One of these vultures is Tabitha Dickinson (Lindsay Duncan), a theater critic who vows to “kill” Riggin’s play the day it comes out. Blaming his empty “celebrity” for keeping “real theater” off the Broadway stages, she promises to write a merciless bad review. In this, Birdman is also a living, breathing examination of the relationship between art and criticism. “What did this cost you?” Riggin says, snatching up the critic’s notepad. “Nothing. What does it cost me? Everything.” You really can’t blame Riggan for telling Tabitha to stick her “opinions” up her anal orifice.

But what drives Riggan to try to soar above his Birdman fame to something else is dangerously clouded, even in his own mind. Is it ego? Is it desperation? Is it age and the hint of mortality? His daughter Sam puts a millennial spin on it in this heated confrontation:

“Let’s face it, Dad, it’s not for the sake of art. It’s because you want to feel relevant again. Well, there’s a whole world out there where people fight to be relevant every day. And you act like it doesn’t even exist! Things are happening in a place that you willfully ignore, a place that has already forgotten you. I mean, who are you? You hate bloggers. You make fun of Twitter. You don’t even have a Facebook page. You’re the one who doesn’t exist. You’re doing this because you’re scared to death, like the rest of us, that you don’t matter. And you know what? You’re right. You don’t. It’s not important. You’re not important. Get used to it.”

Meanwhile the play unfolds, through disastrous previews and opening night terrors, and we see a 20-page tale by Raymond Carver — the modern master of understatement — expanded into a surreal spectacle of bedroom suicides and elk antler dreams. Surprisingly, it seems to work.

What propels Birdman to greater heights is the acting itself, which has to rise to the level of art it’s aiming for. Keaton is unexpectedly astonishing, whether he’s delivering a monologue or charging down Broadway in his tighty-whities, but so is Naomi Watts as Mike’s co-star, and Andrea Riseborough as Riggan’s girlfriend, and Norton as a jaded New Yorker who only tells the truth when he’s onstage, and Stone as a wounded daughter who gets some of the best lines in the film, and hell, even Galifanakis is excellent. This is a true ensemble film where everybody gets a slice of greatness. It’s not easy being a superhero, but it’s also not easy being an actor aiming for that elusive goal of art; the cast of Birdman makes it look easy.

Part of the Oscar buzz surrounding Keaton’s performance inevitably focuses on his “comeback” status, but this is a performance unlike any other he’s given before; on any level, he deserves the attention.

Iñárritu performs superhuman feats, too, with his camera, arranging a seamless, unbroken narrative that wanders from character to character without losing a beat.

A film about a play about a short story? Doesn’t sound much like Oscar gold, but Birdman will probably sweep a number of categories come February.