“Birdman” Didn’t Make Me Smile
A lot of people are going gaga over “Birdman,” the new movie in which Michael Keaton plays Riggan Thomson, a washed-up actor trying to redeem himself on Broadway by directing and starring in an adaptation of Raymond Carver‘s fiction. I had high hopes for the movie: it’s a backstage-theatre drama and I make part of my living by reporting what goes on backstage at the theatre. But the movie’s mishmash of tone made it difficult to care very much about Keaton’s character or those actors (shown in a giant selfie at the New York Film Festival) expertly played by Ed Norton (a committed actor), Naomi Watts (an actress realizing her long-held Broadway dreams), Amy Adams (as Riggan’s wife), or even the always-welcome Emma Stone, as Riggan’s gal-Friday daughter. “Birdman” is not consistently satirical — in spite of its occasional skewering of celebrity culture and the likes of Justin Bieber, it doesn’t go for the jugular of New York show-biz poseurs the way, say, “The Sweet Smell of Success” did. Neither is “Birdman” especially realistic: I could write a book about all the mistakes it makes regarding backstage-Broadway life. And without that grounding in real life the travails of Riggan and co. are ultimately inconsequential: I didn’t care at all whether these people lived and died. Neither is the film pleasurably fanciful: the moments when Riggan soars only made me wish I was seeing a cheesy action flick. The brilliant fluidity of the camera work — most of the movie appears to be a continuous shot — only serves to point up the uninteresting wavering of the overall approach.
