Welcome back everyone! Oscar’s here for you to talk again about a FANTASTIC movie, hoping you enjoyed my last piece about “Spotlight” , the 2016 Winner, the movie which I will propose today is one of my all-time favourite, it’s something you MUST have in your collection and if you haven’t seen it yet, YOU ABSOLUTELY NEED TO.
The 2015 winner…
Oscars won: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Cinematography
Year: 2014
Cast: Michael Keaton, Zach Galifianakis, Edward Norton, Andrea Riseborough, Amy Ryan, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts
Directed by: Alejandro Gomez Inarritu
Now, you know when an incredibly good actor gets trapped in the role of a specific Character (Coff,coff, Johnny Depp, coff, coff) ?? When you know he/she is great in that role but you also want to see him personating another character but he seems fallen in a kind of whirpool and all his/her interpretation looks like that “specific” role? Think about that, how many actors/actresses come to your mind? Let me suggest you some names: Al Pacino in the role of the Gangster ( Tony Montana in “Scarface” , Donnie Brasco, Micheal Corleone in “The GodFather” I,II,III ); Johnny Depp in the role of the “wacky” ( Jack Sparrow (Pirates of the Caribbean, all of them), The Lone Ranger, Willy Wonka in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), the Mad-Hatter in “Alice in Wonderland” ); Sean Bean in the role of the “dead” ( Eddard Stark in “Game Of Thrones”, Boromir in “The Lord of the Rings” , Alec in “OO7-Golden Eye” ) etcetera etcetera etcetera. Birdman, in fact, is the story of a good actor obstructed by a Superhero role he acted in the early of his career, a movie that brought him a lot of success, money and fame, but now the same role is tormenting him, both psychologically, causing him some sort of hallucination in which him believe to have the same powers of the character (fly, telekinesis…), anxiety, humor changes and unexpected rage attacks and it’s also affecting him socially, making people believe
that he’s capable of acting only in that role and that he’s never gonna be a “serious” actor who can play in dramatic roles. With those basis the movie narrate the story of this protagonist ( Micheal Keaton) trying to save and rebuild his life with a drama, re-written and played by himself, based on the play “What we talk about when we talk about love” by Raymond Carver; tormented by his unstable psychic condition, by the troubled-relationship with his doughter (a former-toxic played by an amazing Emma Stone) and by the presence on his same stage of a young actor looking for approval from the crytics ( Edward Norton, certainly not a noob) , the main character will fight for his success. Will he win his inner fight? Will he fell under the blows of crytics?
GO HOME and Watch the movie to discover.
We’ve talked about the plot and how deep it is but if a movie win 4 Oscars it’s NOT because of its plot, or at least not only because of the plot.
Emmanuel Lubezki, “Chivo” for the friends, really did a great job with the photography, winning the Academy Award is just one of his rewards : 3 Oscars ( Gravity 2014, Birdman 2015, The Revenant 2016) 5 BAFTA Awards for the best photography and 3 “Best Technical Contribution” at the “Venice Film Festival” . Not Peanuts.
Inarritu himself wanted Lubezki as Director of photograhy and the Chivo, at the start, was worried about working with a director such as Inarritu because the movie was kind of difficult to shot but after discussing with him, they decided to hire a warehouse and shot it all by themselves. With a minimal setup, the duo worked with a camera and shooted the movie with the minimum requirement… and ended winning 4 f*****g Academy Awards.
It’s not difficult to call Alejandro Gomez Inarritu a genius, we’re talking about a man who won 4 Academy Awards in two years and allowed, under his direction, Leonardo Di Caprio to win the “Best Actor” Academy Award with Revenant ( after many and many tries, poor Leo). But the move that makes this title an authentic must is the idea of Inarritu of mounting all the scenes as a single continuus shot that allow the audience to submerge itself with the protagonist in his inner journey, a real GAME-CHANGER idea that has certainly played a main-role in the decision of the academy to award the “Best Director” prize to the Mexican.
The cast is definitely top notch, no needs to mention Micheal Keaton who has been nominated for the “Best Actor” with his role, but it’s not only him: Emma Stone is
able to obscure her own beauty with a masterful interpretation of the daughter of Keaton; Edward Norton, already mentioned, seems to be born for that role but you sure remember him in masterpieces like Fight Club and American History X and Zach Galifianakis, despite the minor role, manages to get out from the part of the “fool” ( Hangover 1,2,3 ) .
To close this small analysis I’m going to give you some recomandations:
Birdman is not an “easy movie” or, more precisely, it’s movie that have two ways to be watched: you can watch it without concentrating on the spectacular technicalities, enjoying the plot getting to the end without understanding the meanings that the director tried to put in his work OR you can watch it two or more times, analyizing all the stuff and the lights and the interpretations and the shots and the colours choosen and the dialogues understanding that you are watching one of the most complex, beautiful and hard to do Artwork of our times.
Chose wisely.
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