The Venice Film Festival started with a bang with the opening night screening of a film that puts contenders in the coming awards-season on notice. Following his friend and countryman Alfonso Cuarón’s auspicious debut at last year’s festival with Gravity, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman opened to very positive reactions at the Lido’s Palazzo del Cinema. In a departure from much of his previous work, Birdman is a scathing satire on the film and theater worlds that ultimately transcends the boundaries of genre to tell essential truths about ambition and mortality and the mistakes we all make in pursuing success.
The film follows aging superhero action star Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) as he tries to reinvent himself by staging a Raymond Carver adaptation on Broadway. That production threatens to spiral out of control after an accident befalls a leading cast member and Thomson is forced to hire temperamental über-method replacement (Edward Norton) while facing a string of crises, emotional breakdowns, failed romances and the tantrums of a recovering addict teenage daughter Emma Stone. Written by Iñárritu with Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinaleris and Armando Bo the film, which also stars Naomi Watts, Amy Ryan, Zack Galifianakis and Andrea Riseborough, is composed entirely of breathlessly long tracking shots in an act of technical virtuosity and sheer bravado by Mexican cinematographer Emmanuel Lubetzki (Gravity, Children of Men). Safe for the occasional cameo of the titular Birdman (the character Thomson once played and who metaphorically and literally still haunts him), there are no actual superheroes in Birdman which features instead a monumental clash of egos between the characters, what Iñárritu calls a “ridiculous comedy of errors and classic satire in the vein of Don Quixote”.
The satire of Hollywood’s infatuation with comic hero blockbusters is a recurring theme and it will not be lost on most viewers that both Keaton and Norton have notable superhero entries in their filmographies, as Batman and the Incredible Hulk respectively – a fact that only adds to the hilarity of a film that deftly blends fiction and reality.
Some scenes are destined to enter the cult canon, and we, for one, would like to nominate the one in which the recovering action-star and distraught theater director is evaluating a cast replacement with his producer Zack Galifianakis, running down a list of actual A-listers the likes of Jeremy Renner and Ryan Gosling only to find each has been made unavailable because of commitments to superhero blockbusters.
Also grist for the Hollywood mill: George Clooney’s chin and Robert Downey Jr.’s acting chops as well as the over-the-top drama attendant the world of Broadway theater in a movie that at time resembles an All About Eve for the Twitter age.
Critics and journalists also do not escape fierce skewering by Iñárritu whom at the press conference Keaton called an “equal-opportunity offender”. Talking to the press gathered in Venice Iñárritu, best known for much darker fare, said: “I wanted to try something completely new and different. I realized that after 40 sometimes you have to do something terrifying, so I decided to step outside my comfort zone”. Judging from Birdman and its hilarious send-up of insecurity, self-loathing and celebrity obsession it was a risk worth taking.
Luca Celada [gallery:3407]