{"id":15553,"date":"2014-12-23T02:23:53","date_gmt":"2014-12-23T07:23:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=15553"},"modified":"2015-06-08T02:27:41","modified_gmt":"2015-06-08T06:27:41","slug":"birdman-or-the-unexpected-virtue-of-ignorance-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2014\/12\/23\/birdman-or-the-unexpected-virtue-of-ignorance-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"Birdman: Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"birdman\"<\/a><\/h1>\n

\u201cBirdman\u201d is by no means a subtle dissection of the life that Michael Keaton has led after his role as the iconic Batman on film. Once a very respected and comedy actor, his role as the dark knight kind of stifled his developing film career, and he unleashes his obvious bitterness and resentment toward the art of acting and the rise of fame over talent with \u201cBirdman.\u201d Alejandro Gonz\u00e1lez I\u00f1\u00e1rritu\u2019s experimental drama is brilliant and absolutely mind blowing In the way it both mocks the superhero movie craze, while also conveying a sense of resentment toward its success. Keaton\u2019s character Riggan Thomson sits in his dressing room before a play he\u2019s gone nearly broke to fund, hearing on the news about Robert Downey Jr garnering millions to play a superhero. There with his own thoughts, Riggan dwells on how ahead of his time he was and how he may never be able to reclaim the ears thanks to his age.<\/p>\n

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When we first see him he\u2019s an actor preparing to perform in an adaptation of his favorite play, and returns to the darkness of his theater, lifting off a veneer of illusion with a toupee that he still dons in public, for some reason. \u201cBirdman\u201d breaks down the ideas of fame vs. talent, film vs. product, and what power the new generation of digital information can acquire for any celebrity looking for resurgence. At first Thomson is barely a blip on anyone\u2019s screen, but his stunt of appearing in his play in the buff by entering through crowds of onlookers grants him instant viral success. In another decade the stunt may have caused a minor stir, but in the world of instant news, he begins to regain his power thanks to his daughter Sam who films the stunt, and puts it online. The team of writers for \u201cBirdman\u201d really spares no one, taking down the Hollywood establishment, the humongous trend of superhero films, and how many respected actors have taken on the mantle of comic book characters.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no big surprise that Keaton shares the screen with two other comic book movie stalwarts Edward Norton, and Emma Stone, both of whom seem to convey the same frustration at the loss of cinematic art in the face of attending to mass consumption. Thomson has subconsciously convinced himself that he is, in some form, his character Birdman. Birdman is, of course, a big screen superhero very similar to Batman with a blockbuster film franchise that\u2019s gone on without Thomson. Despite his name being on marquees in Broadway, when Thomson is approached by fans, they point to Thomson proclaiming \u201cHe was Birdman!\u201d Thomson can\u2019t escape the moniker of Birdman, and doesn\u2019t seem to want to. He sits in his dressing room speaking to a manifestation of his film character, who antagonizes him, and longs to reclaim his glory as a blockbuster star.<\/p>\n

The Birdman alter ego is his temptation to get back in to the series and trade in his attempts at being a respected Broadway player, and it culminates in to a maddening journey that has him clash with his co-stars. Norton is wonderful as Mike Shiner, something of a caricature of himself, who monopolizes the play with his erratic behavior, prompting Thomson to wonder how far he will go to ensure the play is a success. Emma Stone\u2019s performance is outstanding, playing Riggan\u2019s daughter who bitterly attends to him as his assistant and anxiously tries to clarify to him why his play is barely making waves in the entertainment world, and why no one seems to care about his adaptation but Riggan. Stone steals every single scene she shares with her cast members, and Alejandro Gonz\u00e1lez I\u00f1\u00e1rritu is never shy about featuring as a maddening gate keeper with potential to hold power over her father at every turn. \u201cBirdman\u201d is a brilliant and incredible look at the actor\u2019s experience, and a world that\u2019s lost its ability to distinguish between famous and talented. It\u2019s nothing short of a masterpiece.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cBirdman\u201d is by no means a subtle dissection of the life that Michael Keaton has led after his role as the iconic Batman on film. Once a very respected and comedy actor, his role as the dark knight kind of stifled his developing film career, and he unleashes his obvious bitterness and resentment toward the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[111,120,259,302,359,472,637],"class_list":["post-15553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-arthouse","tag-b","tag-dark-comedy","tag-drama","tag-filmmaking","tag-hollywood","tag-masterpiece"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15553"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15555,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15553\/revisions\/15555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}