Martin I. Petrov

Venezia 71 Competition, Birdman, dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu, US 

On the huge screen a girl named Sam (Emma Stone) yells at her dad’s face (Michael Keaton) the truth about his pointless, miserable life. On the row behind, a man shouts “Bellissima, bellissima”. Drums are banging, Broadway theatre lights are falling from the roof and Edward Norton gets a hard on onstage. If you need time to decide whether you’re feeling puzzled or not, you’re not the only one. 

US based Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu opens this year’s Mostra with an out-of-his -waters loud, hilarious and utterly extravagant insight on the psychedelic world of a Broadway actor who performs an ultimate attempt to revive his career from the ashes. Michael Keaton is Riggan Thompson, the lead of the successful Hollywood hit "Birdman", his only professional moment fondly remembered by the crowds. Some decades after, Riggan still struggles to escape the shadow of being the “Birdman”. Convinced that the last play he’s trying to get on stage will reboot his career, Thompson finds the perfect match for his protagonist in the face of Mike (Edward Norton). 

As the final days before the opening night roll out, the long kept fierce and desperation starts kicking in in the most grotesque way. Not afraid to attack openly the multibillion film and theatre industry, Iñárritu sets up an incredibly humorous comment on the “lost in translation” lives of his Broadway players, with a simultaneous dramaturgic approach infiltrating the storyline. He builds up an interaction between the story performed on stage and the one behind the curtains that is always more shocking and bizarre. Blended in a hurricane of suppressed personalities and hidden dreams and desires, Iñárritu unfolds all the shiny wrapping and artsy glamour, discovering his characters’ inner reality, which includes the same, if not wider, palette of feelings and emotions with ours.

Riggan is followed on every step by his “Birdman” alter ego, which being ‘Deus ex machina’ and his death sentence at the same time guides him towards the desired rebirth. Mike is strongly suffocated by his attempt to balance his character’s life with his own, thus he actively prefers living the dream than wandering in reality. Riggan’s daughter Sam (Emma Stone), an ex-drug addict is her father’s personal assistant representing a new generation of social independence seeking youth, and Lesley (Naomi Watts) as Norton’s ex-wife and co-star are the strong female presences, adding a glorious dose of kick-ass emotional outbursts, used to dress up the complexities and vulnerability of their sensitive nature.

Apparently Iñárritu’s most visual film so far, Birdman is his console for experiment. The protagonist’s vivid imagination demanded unexpected visuals, which apparently need to be there. Although creatively mastered, they seem an unnecessary part of the attack against Hollywood, already tailored with priceless dialogues and well balanced performance comments. The glorious extravaganza of Hollywood and Broadway gathered together, create on their own an atmosphere of a boisterous manifesto, where dimensions become blurry lines. On a marathon of madness we jump from the stage and the theatre corridors straight in the vastness of New York City, where the loneliness can be so easily underlined.

Whereas some years ago we would talk about a division between Hollywood and indie cinema, today we can easily set the scope on the battle between Hollywood and those who unscrupulously point out all its faults and inadequacies. In terms of joining this war zone, Iñárritu does it through a more sophisticated perspective than Cronenberg did some months ago with Maps to the stars. Using Broadway as a stage, he puts Hollywood in the epicenter of his smart, direct and boisterous humor. Both directors, though, build a plot around a single character, surrounded by a complex web of parallel stories, important for the flow but unable to stand out on their own.

Experimenting with self-reflexivity in cinema, Iñárritu exposes his full star-cast without being exploitative or humiliating but rather compassionate. The strong criticism and cynical black humor is omnipresent and at times exaggerated, but is definitely one of the strongest elements of Birdman’s formula of a film based on the interaction of the authentic with the imaginary. The obsessive fantasies of Riggan are very close to Darren Aronofsky’s character in The black swan – both figures captive of their own desires and dreams start gradually drowning in their own ignorance and self- destructiveness. Iñárritu creates an atmospheric discourse between the powerful dramatic action and the viewer’s engagement, dynamically enhanced here by the outstanding dialogue construction, some masterful close ups and a soundtrack that sticks in mind for long.

Giving way to vanity and social madness in contemporary New York of glamour and unlimited chances, Birdman is about the perilous games of the human mind, about recreation and sentimentality in times when we tend to “confuse love with admiration”, as the dialogues tremendously remind us.