Birdman (film)

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) is a 2014 American black comedy drama film co-written, produced, and directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu. It stars Michael Keaton, Zach Galifianakis, Edward Norton, Andrea Riseborough, Amy Ryan, Emma Stone, and Naomi Watts. Keaton plays a faded Hollywood actor famous for his superhero role struggling to mount a Broadway adaptation of a Raymond Carver story.

Birdman was the opening film of the 71st Venice International Film Festival, where it premiered on August 27, 2014, in competition for the Golden Lion. It received a limited theatrical release in the United States on October 17, 2014, and a wide release on November 14, distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures. The film grossed over $59 million worldwide.

Birdman received critical acclaim, and was named one of the best films of 2014 by organizations including the AFI and the National Board of Review. It was nominated for seven Golden Globe Awards at the 72nd ceremony, including Best Motion Picture â€" Musical or Comedy, Best Director, Best Score and won for Best Screenplay. Keaton won Best Actor, while Norton and Stone were nominated for Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress respectively at both the Golden Globe Awards and the 21st Screen Actors Guild Awards, where the cast won for Outstanding Cast in a Motion Picture. At the 87th Academy Awards, Birdman received nine nominations, joint most for the ceremony (with The Grand Budapest Hotel), including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and acting nominations for Keaton, Norton and Stone.

Plot

Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) is a washed-up Hollywood actor famous for playing the superhero Birdman in blockbuster movies decades earlier. Riggan is tormented by the voice of Birdman, who criticizes him, and he imagines himself performing feats of levitation and telekinesis. Riggan hopes to reinvent his career by writing, directing, and starring in a Broadway adaptation of Raymond Carver's short story "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love". The play is produced by Riggan's best friend and lawyer Jake (Zach Galifianakis), and also stars Riggan's girlfriend Laura (Andrea Riseborough) and first-time Broadway actress Lesley (Naomi Watts). Riggan's daughter Sam (Emma Stone), a recovering addict, serves as his assistant.

During rehearsals, a light falls onto Ralph, an actor Riggan and Jake agree is terrible; Riggan tells Jake he caused the light to fall so he could replace Ralph. Through a connection with Lesley, Riggan replaces Ralph with the brilliant but volatile method actor Mike (Edward Norton), refinancing his house to fund his contract. The first previews go disastrously: Mike breaks character over the replacement of his gin with water, and attempts to rape Lesley during a sex scene. Riggan reads early reviews and is incensed that Mike has stolen the attention, but Jake encourages him to continue. When Riggan catches Sam using marijuana, she tells him he does not matter and his play is a vanity project.

Backstage during the final preview, Riggan sees Sam and Mike flirting. He accidentally locks himself out of the theater and has to walk in his underwear through Times Square to get back inside; his popularity explodes online. Afterwards, he runs into influential critic Tabitha Dickinson, who tells him she hates Hollywood celebrities who "pretend" to be actors, and promises to "kill" his play with a negative review. Riggan gets drunk and passes out in the street. The next day, he hallucinates a conversation with Birdman, who tries to convince him to make another Birdman film, and imagines himself flying through New York City back to the theater.

On opening night, Riggan uses a real gun for the final scene in which his character kills himself, and shoots his nose off onstage. He earns a standing ovation from all but Tabitha, who leaves during the applause. In the hospital, Jake tells Riggan that Tabitha gave the play a rave review. After Sam visits Riggan, he dismisses Birdman and climbs onto the window ledge; when Sam returns, Riggan is gone. She looks down at the street, then up at the sky, and smiles.

Cast

• Michael Keaton as Riggan Thomson / Birdman
• Edward Norton as Mike Shiner, an acclaimed Broadway actor
• Emma Stone as Sam Thomson, Riggan's daughter and assistant
• Naomi Watts as Lesley, an actress and Mike's former girlfriend
• Zach Galifianakis as Jake, Riggan's lawyer and friend
• Andrea Riseborough as Laura, an actress and Riggan's girlfriend
• Amy Ryan as Sylvia Thomson, Riggan's ex-wife, Sam's mother
• Lindsay Duncan as Tabitha Dickinson, a top theatre critic
• Merritt Wever as Annie, the stage manager
• Jeremy Shamos as Ralph
• Frank Ridley as Mr. Roth
• Katherine O'Sullivan as Costume Assistant
• Damian Young as Gabriel

Production

Filming

Aside from a few shots near the beginning and end of the film, Birdman appears as a continuous long take. Iñárritu stated that after realizing that "we live our lives with no editing", by using a single shot for the film he was able to submerge the protagonist in an "inescapable reality" and take the audience with him. He did not know whether the technique would be successful however, describing it as "almost suicidal", and faced resistance from "huge" and "important" people. Despite the difficulty in pulling it off, Iñárritu was worried that the one-shot would become a distraction and "wanted to keep it in a way humble and in service of the narrative."

Once the writing was finished, Iñárritu contacted friend and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki to discuss his idea for the film. After reading the script, Lubezki was worried that Iñárritu would offer him the job since "[Birdman] had all of the elements of a movie that I did not want to do at all" â€" comedy, studio work and long takes â€" but changed his mind after further discussion with the director. The pair had worked together on commercials and a short film in the anthology To Each His Own Cinema, but not on any feature films. Lubezki wanted to be sure that this was a decision Rodrigo Prieto, cinematographer of all four of Iñárritu's feature films, was comfortable with, but after receiving his blessing, the two headed into pre-production.

Lubezki was concerned that no film had been shot in the way Iñárritu envisioned, meaning there would be no reference material to look-up. The two decided the only way to learn how to shoot it would be to shoot it themselves, so they hired a warehouse in Sony Studios, Los Angeles, and built a proxy stage. The setup was minimal, with canvas and C-stands for walls, tape and a few pieces of furniture to mark out areas. Using a camera and some stand-ins, the duo worked through the movie to see if it was possible. Having realized no theater had all the backstage areas they required, they hired Kaufman Astoria Studios in New York. Still, Iñárritu wanted to shoot at a Broadway theater, but would have to wait until several weeks into rehearsals before securing St. James Theatre. They then went about having the stand-ins read and walk through the script to see how large the set needed to be. Afterwards, they designed and made "blueprints" of the shots and the blocking of the scenes. The planning was precise. Iñárritu said "There was no room to improvise at all. Every movement, every line, every door opening, absolutely everything was rehearsed." The actors started rehearsing once this preliminary work was completed: according to Lubezki, they did the scenes with the actors "once we kind of knew what the rhythm of the scenes were." He described the atypical approach "like an upside down movie where you do post-production before the production."

During the blocking of the scenes and rehearsals, Iñárritu gathered his long-time editors Douglas Crise and Stephen Mirrione onto the proxy set, so they could discuss where to remove edits. Production designer Kevin Thompson was on hand too, since many of the shots Iñárritu desired required the set to be built in a certain way. For example, Riggan's makeup mirror and desk were constructed so that the camera would see his reflection. Thompson also took into consideration the needs of the crew, for instance designing the stairs a little wider for Steadicam operator Chris Haarhoff's footsize. Drummer Antonio Sanchez was also involved in production at this point, providing sketches of music to inform the pacing of scenes.

Once the logistics of the scenes were worked out and they had the timing down, the team headed to Kaufman Studios for more rehearsals, followed by principal photography based exclusively in New York during the spring of 2013. The studios were used to film the backstage areas of the film, including Riggan's dressing room and the theatre corridors. St. James Theatre was used for two weeks, and was the location for the stage scenes. The bar segments were shot in The Rum House on 47th Street, and 43rd Street was used for the action-sequence. Throughout the locations, including the studio, the scenes were lit with natural light, since Lubezki wanted the movie "to look as naturalistic as possible." The night-time scenes were possible to film in this way due to the brightness of New York.

Througout shooting, Arri Alexa cameras were used, with an Alexa M for handheld sequences and an Alexa XT attached to the Steadicam. Neither used matteboxes, however. Steadicam operator Chris Haarhoff explained this decision: "We didn’t want this big black thing gliding into their eyeline. This way we could get very close and get the light past the lens and onto the actor’s face." Lubezki â€" who did all the handheld camerawork â€" had chosen the Alexa M because the camera was very small and allowed him to get into tiny spaces and close to the actors, sometimes filming two inches away from Keaton's face. The camera also allowed recording for a such long period â€" necessary for the long takes of the movie â€" that Lubezki went so far as to say the movie would have been impossible to do years before. The cameras were lensed with Leica Summilux-C or Zeiss Master Primes. Lubezki stated that these gave clean images, saying "You can have all these lights in the frame and they are not really causing bad flare or things like that." In terms of sizes, they initially trialled an 21mm, but this didn't give Iñárritu the "intimacy" he wanted. The crew instead went to a 18mm Leica, which was used for the majority of the film. Only when emphasis was needed did they switch the lens to a 14mm, but this was rare.

The meticulous timing for the scenes meant that takes were cancelled because of the slightest mishaps. Emma Stone, in an interview with Jimmy Fallon, recalled how a six-minute take of the scene where Riggan first meets Mike was ruined after she walked around a corner too quickly. Because of this, the number of takes for a given scene was high, usually twenty for the shorter scenes, the takes running smoothly around the fifteenth. Chris Haarhoff described it as "a type of dance where everyone would hopefully try to peak all at the same moment." The locations sometimes placed restrictions on the takes too; the Times Square sequence was shot only twice since they didn't want to attract the attention of tourists. Whenever shooting was taking place however, there was pressure on everyone involved. Edward Norton said that normally in movie production half the people can "check out" due to repetitive aspects, but during the shooting of Birdman "everybody's on, the whole thing, and you're all on pins and needles because you're all relying on forty other people not to drop the ball." Naomi Watts commented that the atmosphere "felt emblematic of how it feels onstage â€" at least my long-time memories from long ago." Andrea Riseborough, meanwhile, described the process as "wonderful", mentioning how it was possible to hear the filming of a sequence from far away before the camera arrived and then "the magic happens with you, and then everything leaves you, and everything's silent."

Music

On January 7, 2014, Antonio Sánchez was set to compose the music for the film. The soundtrack album was released on October 14, 2014. It was later disqualified for the Academy Award for Best Original Score, due to the ratio of classical music to original score.

Excerpts from the following classical pieces appear in the soundtrack:

• Ravel, Pavane for a Dead Princess
• Ravel, Piano Trio, third movement
• Rachmaninoff, Symphony No. 2, first and second movement
• Mahler, "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen" (from Rückert-Lieder)
• Mahler, Symphony No. 9, first movement
• Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 4, second movement
• Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 5, second movement
• Rachmaninoff, Symphonic Dances, first movement
• Schoenberg, Verklärte Nacht

Release

On July 10, 2014, it was announced that Birdman had been selected as the opening film of the 71st Venice International Film Festival along with Mohsen Makhmalbaf's new film. The film got a limited release on October 17, 2014, with a theatre count of 4 in North America, and on November 14, 2014, it was released nationwide in 857 theatres.

Box office

As of January 11, 2015, Birdman has grossed $50,013,000 worldwide including $30,913,000 in North America and $19,100,000 in other territories against a production budget of $18 million.

The film made a total of $424,397 in North America in its limited opening weekend of October 17, 2014, playing in 4 theatres in New York and Los Angeles for a per theater average of $106,099 which ranks 18th all-time (eighth among live-action movies) and ranking #20. In the second weekend of October 24, 2014, Birdman expanded to 50 theaters and earned $1.38 million, that translates to a $27,593 per-theater average. The film expanded nationwide to 857 theaters in the weekend of November 14, 2014, grossing $2,471,471 with a per theatre average of $2,884 and ranking #10. In the same weekend, Birdman grossed $11.6 million.

The film opened in Mexico in November 13, 2014, grossing $628,915 in its opening weekend and it opened in January 2, 2015, in United Kingdom grossing $2,337,407 over the weekend.

Critical response

Birdman received widespread critical acclaim, particularly for Keaton, Norton, and Stone's performances. At Rotten Tomatoes, it has a rating of 92% based on 251 reviews, with an average rating of 8.5/10. The site's critical consensus states: "A thrilling leap forward for director Alejandro González Iñárritu, Birdman is an ambitious technical showcase powered by a layered story and outstanding performances from Michael Keaton and Edward Norton." Metacritic gave the film a score of 88 out of 100, based on reviews from 48 critics, indicating "universal acclaim."

The camera work, which depicts most of the film as one continuous take, was met with extensive acclaim for its execution and usage. The acting was widely praised, particularly Keaton, with Peter Debruge of Variety calling the performance the "comeback of the century." Debruge described the film as "a self aware showbiz satire" and called it "a triumph on every creative level." Robbie Collin of The Daily Telegraph gave the film 5/5, with particular praise for the use of long takes by Emmanuel Lubezki, director of photography. Richard Roeper gave the film an "A", and wrote that Keaton makes a serious case for an Academy Award for Best Actor nomination.

Writing for The New Yorker, Richard Brody called the film "Godardian," comparing it to Pierrot le fou, Every Man for Himself, Alphaville and Germany Year 90 Nine Zero, four classic films by French director Jean-Luc Godard. However, he suggested the film fell short of reaching the same cinematic mastery, adding, "it’s not a good idea for a filmmaker to get in the ring with Mr. Godard." Thematically, he also compared it to Opening Night by John Cassavetes. He added that the actors played in, "the sort of modern naturalism, without eccentricity of gesture, excess of expression, or heightened and formalistic precision, that is the business-casual of contemporary cinema." He concluded that the film, "trade[d] on facile, casual dichotomies of theatre versus cinema and art versus commerce" and "deliver[ed] a work of utterly familiar and unoriginal drama." Also in The New Yorker, Anthony Lane rejected the film's suggestion that film critics are out to destroy films, explaining, "Someone could have told Iñárritu that critics, though often mean, are not preemptively so, and that anybody who said, as Tabitha does, “I’m going to destroy your play,” before actually seeing it, would not stay long in the job."

In The New York Times, Manohla Dargis compared the main character to Icarus. She also noted a reference to Susan Sontag's Against Interpretation in the dressing-room mirror.

Noting the thematic pull between Riggan's insanity or actual superpowers, Travis LaCouter of First Things writes that "the importance of these powersâ€"real or imaginedâ€"is apparent: They are for Riggan the thing beyond the labels, the kernel of his genius and, because he sees drawing upon them as selling out, the source of his great angst." LaCouter concludes that "the quirky profundity of this film is in how it dares the viewer to consider the everyday magic that we tend to ignore, repress, or resent."

A number of critics have provided highly negative reviews, however. Reviewing it for Vanity Fair, Richard Lawson called the film "hoary" and "deceptively simple." Scott Tobias, writing for The Dissolve, gave the film 1.5 stars. He commends Lubezki's cinematography as succeeding at "trapping viewers in a pressure-cooker atmosphere as Riggan and his players struggle to keep it together", but suggests that Iñárritu is "incapable of modulation" and that there exists "a sourness to Birdman that Iñárritu can’t turn into wit."

Accolades

Michael Keaton received his first Golden Globe award, winning for Best Actor in a Motion Picture â€" Musical or Comedy at the 72nd Golden Globe Awards.

For the 87th Academy Awards, Birdman tied with The Grand Budapest Hotel in the highest number of nominations with nine, including Best Picture, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Original Screenplay, Cinematography and Best Actor for Keaton. Emma Stone and Edward Norton were nominated in Best Supporting Acting categories. Alejandro González Iñárritu was nominated for Best Director.

Year-end lists

Birdman appeared on over 50 critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2014. Over a dozen publications ranked the film first in their lists.

• 1st - Brad Brevet - Rope of Silicon

References

External links

• Official website
• Birdman at the Internet Movie Database
• Birdman at AllMovie
• Birdman at Box Office Mojo
• Birdman at Metacritic
• Birdman at Rotten Tomatoes