“People, they love blood. They love action. Not this talky, depressing, philosophical bullshit.”
Birdman is a really, really, really weird movie—in the best kind of way.
The movie gave me such anxiety and I’m not sure if it was Michael Keaton’s character’s rising insanity, the long takes, the American Psycho-ness of the film, or a mixture of everything. By the end of the movie, I felt insane…or, well, more insane than usual.
Writer/director, Alejandro González Iñárritu, must be a big fan of Norman Mailer’s American Dream and Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho—the style seemed heavily influenced by both. Which is what I hated and loved about the movie. I have a love/hate relationship with Mailer and Ellis (Ellis mostly just because I follow him on Twitter and he comes off as…not my favorite person).
Michael Keaton, Emma Stone, and Edward Norton all have long lines of dialogue about how shitty superhero movies are and how they’re the only movies people want to see—all of which felt a little too on the nose. There were scenes like this that felt like they just needed to be edited a little bit better. Like, the lesbian kiss scene that should’ve just ended with Naomi Watts saying, “What are you doing?” Also, for a movie called Birdman, with Birdman himself being heavily featured in the trailer—it took way too long for us to actually see Birdman.
But, those are my only minor issues with the film. The film is something I wish I’d written. Every actor is perfect in their role—and, most surprisingly, Zach Galifianakis is really underused (something I never thought I’d say). And if you’re name is Ian Carlos Crawford, Emma Stone’s character will make your already existing crush on Miss Stone skyrocket to new, absurd levels. Michael Keaton does crazy so well and Edward Norton seemed to be playing a weird parody version of himself. Also, how good is Holly from The Office (Amy Ryan) in this? She should be in more things. Naomi Watts, unfortunately, deserved a better role in this.
Once we start to see Birdman, we see a lot of him. Also, things get ten times crazier for the rest of the movie. I feel like I could write a research paper on all the craziness—that is, if I could sit still long enough to ever write a research paper. And, you know, if I wasn’t so busy writing my Erotic Friend Fiction.
Then the ending happened and I loved that he didn’t quite do what I thought he’d do…but then the end was annoyingly like the ending of the American Psycho book—everything you had thought that was just the main character going crazy gets a last minute addition that says “Maybe he wasn’t,” even though he most likely was. So, yeah, I liked the end but hated the very last scene because it didn’t make sense.
Grade: 4/5 washed up superheroes
Twitter: @ianxcarlos
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