Michael Keaton and Edward Norton star in “Birdman.”
“I have an inner voice or ego, whatever we want to call it, who’s a tyrant, a dictator, who’s never happy with what I do,” says director Alejandro González Iñárritu. “Especially in my creative process, which is very tortuous, it’s always full of doubts, it’s never satisfied.
“I thought that would be a good thing to put in a film because all of us, not just artists, but every human being, has an inner voice that talks to us and can be very cruel.”
Mindbending concept
In the director and co-writer’s audaciously executed, mindbending dark comedy, “Birdman (or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance),” that cruel inner voice springs from its subject’s greatest success. Stop me if you’ve heard this one, but Michael Keaton plays an actor who reached the apex of fame playing a caped-and-cowled superhero decades ago. Keaton’s Riggan Thomson is now at a career nadir, attempting to rise with a Broadway vanity project. (Keaton has said, apart from the obvious parallels, he relates to Riggan less than to any other role in his career.)
“It’s part of the mental reality of the film,” Iñárritu says by phone from New York, “that it’s a film about a play of a film guy that’s doing a play that becomes a film — it’s full of mirrors and his dressing room is full of mirrors — it’s full of contradictions and mirrors in the mirrors.”
Complicating Riggan’s attempt at ascension are a vicious critic (Lindsay Duncan), a loose-cannon actor (Edward Norton), a daughter fresh out of rehab (Emma Stone), and his own tenuous grip on reality. As he attempts to drag the show he has adapted, directed, produced and stars in onto the boards, the specter of Birdman keeps pushing Riggan’s ego in his way.
By the way, Bat-fans: Keaton’s Birdman voice is a lot more like Christian Bale’s Batman voice than Keaton’s Batman voice. Holy sandpaper, Batman!
Anyway, a Buddhist might say Riggan longs to transcend, but earthly attachments weigh him down.
“Ego always works in the past or the future; it never allows us to be present in our life,” Iñárritu says. “Riggan Thomson is always worried with what happened before, how great it was, or ‘How great I will be after this.’ But it’s never really about the present life, which is all we have. I think many people suffer from that.”
‘Personal madness’
Iñarritu compares the character to Don Quixote.
“The ambitions that Riggan has are so absolutely out of his possibilities, it’s crazy what he’s doing. It’s absurd, the distortion of the perception he has of himself and the world. It’s like a personal madness that, for me at least, is heartbreaking and lovable but at the same time can be very tragic.”
The film’s central cinematic conceit of a single, unbroken take is plenty to digest, but “Birdman” still manages a little mustard on the side: a few shots at the press, a few actor digs and injokes — biting, but with fondness. That extends to the casting of Norton as the brilliant but unpredictable co-star.
“He was a theater actor from New York; he has a (reputation) for being difficult. So there was a meta-reality to that, too,” Iñárritu says. “But contrary to what has been said, the guy was lovable. His character was a resentful kind of theater actor, jealous in a way — I liked the way he portrayed that, but that he was also very loyal. That’s a very beautiful side of that character. With a bad actor, it could have been a caricature.”
The film’s cast, particularly the sympathetic Keaton, is getting awards buzz. For his part, Iñárritu has already collected a number of laurels — and for good reason. “Birdman” is a bravura cinematic construct.
With a few cheats, its one snaking, seamless shot winds around the characters and through the corridors of the theater. It’s at once flowing and relentless, akin to a river that’s simply going where it’s going, no matter how the characters struggle to change its course.’
‘One shot’
“When I had the idea of making this film, I knew it would be in one shot,” says the director and co-writer. “It not only creatively excited me, but I knew it would be the best way to tell the story, and you have to make that choice always. Being from the point of view of Michael and making people navigate in his mind was something I really wanted.”
That meant meticulously planning every shot, rigidly locking in blocking and timing camera moves to dialogue in ways Iñárritu had never done before.
“The decisions one has to make when you will not have coverage, the wide shot, the close-up, the over-the-shoulder, all those things you would play with to find the tone, the internal rhythm of the film; to know where to put the camera in every moment, which point of view you should be serving … and freaking out about the transitions.”
Oscar-winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki “obviously did an amazing job — everything is practical light,” Iñárritu says. “The camera operating in those corridors, it was very claustrophobic, almost impossible.
‘Flying mosquitos’
“We worked in 180 degrees, 360 degrees, so where even to put the crew was a question. We were basically like flying mosquitos.”
One might expect such careful choreography to restrict the actors, but the performances are energetic and present. Iñárritu says the highwire, group effort required might have had something to do with that.
“Everybody was (intertwined) with each other. The focus puller, the camera operator, the boom-sound, with those corridors and the beat (by jazz drummer Antonio Sánchez) and the opening doors and the rhythm, every actor’s line and specific marks. ... It was nerve-racking in a way because anything can go wrong at any minute.
“We were exposed. It was fun. But it was terrifying.”