The 2010s were a notoriously uneven decade for Best Picture winners — consider that the trainwreck that is Green Book and the masterpiece that is Parasite won the award back-to-back. Half of the winners were incredibly inspired — 12 Years a Slave, Spotlight, Moonlight, and The Shape of Water — while the other half ranged from the forgettable (Argo, The Artist) to the outright mediocre (The King’s Speech). And then there’s Birdman. From the singular, highly idiosyncratic, and often questionable mind of Alejandro González Iñárritu, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) is a dark comedy-drama about a washed-up actor, mainly known for a superhero role, trying to stage a comeback with a Broadway adaptation of a Raymond Carver story.
At face value, Birdman looks like a stylistic and technical exercise from one of cinema’s most visually interesting yet polarizing auteurs. Unlike many movies, which have deeper layers compared to the first impression they give away, Birdman reinforces it: what you see is what you get, for better and worse. On its 10th anniversary, let’s look back at Birdman‘s unique legacy, discussing how it reshaped the careers of its two leading players — Iñárritu and Michael Keaton — and how it became, arguably, the single most eyebrow-raising Best Picture winner of the new millennium.
‘I’m trying to do something important.’
Birdman tells the story of Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton), an actor who rose to international fame by playing Birdman, a superhero with a film trilogy during the late ’80s and early ’90s. Now, two decades after his last stint in the costume, Riggan is trying to stage a comeback by adapting the Raymond Carver short story What We Talk About When We Talk About Love as a Broadway play, hoping it will legitimize his career. Co-starring opposite a Broadway newcomer (Naomi Watts), his girlfriend (Andrea Riseborough), and a self-absorbed method actor (Edward Norton), Riggan must balance their wild antics, his volatile relationship with his drug-addicted daughter (Emma Stone), and the voice inside his mind, which takes the form of Birdman to taunt and mock him.
Let’s start by stating the obvious: Birdman is very much a showcase for Iñárritu and the ensemble cast, especially Michael Keaton. Iñárritu’s artistic sensibilities are well-known by now. A man who loves nothing more than the sound of his voice, Iñárritu uses Birdman as both a training ground for technical experimentation and an empty track to run a victory lap, essentially patting himself on the back. And it works, too! Visually, Birdman is very appealing. I’m not talking about the one-shot gimmick — yes, it very much is a gimmick, albeit a successful one — but rather about Iñárritu’s understanding of and control over the space. The film is staged like a play — every movement feels deliberate, to the point of seeming unnatural, and every time a character moves from point A to point B, you can practically see the director’s hand raising and dropping them, like a child playing with dolls.
The striking cinematography from Emmanuel Lubezki also goes a long way in crafting Birdman‘s enveloping, stylized, sensory world. The colors on display are vivid to the point of overwhelming, injecting vibrant, commanding life into this otherwise cold and detached world. Lubezki is a true master of his craft, and Birdman represents the perfect marriage of his technical prowess and his distinct artistic sensibilities. Lubezki’s touch is crucial to making Birdman more palatable — where Iñárritu’s abrasive, confrontational style threatens to alienate, Lubezki instead invites and, to a degree, simplifies.
Michael Keaton: From Batman to Birdman
Then there’s Michael Keaton. A prolific actor of the late ’80s and early ’90s, Keaton saw his career wane going into the new millennium, playing the sort of basic roles that benefitted from his name recognition without giving him anything meaningful to do. Birdman rests entirely not only on Keaton’s talents as a performer but also on our idea of who Michael Keaton is. It’s no coincidence that Riggan is known for playing a superhero who uses a winged creature as the basis for his persona. Keaton even asked Iñárritu if he was “making fun” of his career, a legitimate concern, considering the material. The mutual gamble paid off, with Keaton delivering a career-defining tour de force performance that is as much a commentary on the entertainment industry as it is a reflection on his artistic journey.
In a way, Birdman is taking shots at Keaton’s career. The film is very overt in its distaste for the superhero genre, which Iñárritu once called “cultural genocide.” It’s not hard to see how the director draws a direct parallel between Keaton’s stint as Batman and the subsequent decline in his career. It’s quite unfair to say so, largely because Keaton remains the best Batman and contributed significantly to the hero’s legacy.
Still, Iñárritu sets out to “restore” Keaton’s career, giving him a flashy and complex role that the actor beautifully brings to life. In a performance completely devoid of ego, Keaton fully embraces Riggan’s struggle, going all-in and capturing his desperation and vulnerability like few others could. Keaton is Birdman‘s beating heart, preventing it from being overpowered by Iñárritu’s pompous ways. His efforts resulted in a renewed interest in his work and a plethora of awards, including an Oscar nomination that he should’ve 100% won.
‘It’s not for the sake of art.’
In simple terms, Birdman is a remarkably bleak look at the current situation of the entertainment landscape, even if its approach is quite basic. Like the critic who berates Riggan for his inconsequential and meaningless career, Birdman takes a holier-than-thou assessment of art, analyzing it only in the most basic terms. I’m not here to argue the artistic value of superhero movies since that conversation is more complicated and, I’d argue, not very interesting. However, I can’t help but take issue with the movie’s eye-rolling commentaries on cinema as a whole; to Birdman, everything that’s not Raymond Carver is little more than trash. Do we see the problem there?
That’s the main issue with Birdman. Like many of Iñárritu’s previous movies, it’s an either/or story where art and commercialism are inherently at odds with each other, where words like “popular” and “mainstream” are negative to the point of insult, and where “the craft” takes precedent over everything. So what if Riggan actually shoots himself on stage? There’s value in his sacrifice; he finally made something important, and his mental and physical well-being was a fair price to pay. In a world where bad individuals have long gotten away with awful things just for being very good at their jobs, Birdman‘s assessment seems questionable at best and reprehensible at worst.
And yet, it’s hard not to relate to Birdman‘s pessimistic view on things, especially considering where we find ourselves today. Dominated by blockbusters, superhero movies, and movies without substance, the current world of entertainment seems at a tipping point with only a few glimmers of hope for a brighter future. At a time when AI is on the rise, when major movie studios are actually surrendering to it to make important decisions, and even so-called actors and directors are touting it as the future of cinema, Birdman‘s gloomy and outright fatalistic commentary on the state of cinema as an art form seems more prescient than ever.
I’m not saying Birdman offers anything of interest to the ongoing conversation — in fact, I think its simplistic take on the issue is as harmful as a person tweeting, “Let people enjoy things.” However, I am saying the film had a valid point; it just had a bad way of expressing it. There must be more nuance when assessing art, both positive and negative, and equating superhero cinema with literal genocide might be too alarmist to mean anything, especially because the genre, like so many others throughout cinematic history, seems to have finally cooled down. It might have a few hits here and there, but I believe we can confidently say the days when Marvel drove the cultural conversation stayed behind in the pre-pandemic world of the 2010s.
The unexpected virtue of ignorance
When looking back at Birdman, what do you take away from it? It’s all very technically impressive and visually appealing; the soundtrack is cool, and Keaton, Stone, and Norton are stellar. But what do you actually take from the experience? If the answer is what I think it is, then I think Birdman‘s status as an exercise in self-validation and ostentatiousness is warranted. Like the illusory notion that the entire thing is one long continuous take, Birdman is an illusion of a movie.
The truth is Birdman is more a premise than an actual thesis. I won’t say it’s more style than substance — style is substance in Birdman. However, I think that a movie that talks such a big talk should be ready to back it up, and Birdman really doesn’t do that. It takes shots at genre movies by telling rather than showing, instead relying entirely on your perceptions of those movies to prove its point. But by adopting this absolutist and condemnatory approach, Birdman prevents others from engaging with it. Ironically, it becomes the very thing it’s satirizing, a highly elaborate but somewhat empty effort made to pander to a specific group.
Still, I cannot fault the Academy or the industry for rewarding it. There’s something refreshing about Birdman‘s self-deluded confidence and flamboyance. Like a high-maintenance, self-deluded thespian, Birdman stands alone on a stage and demands your attention through such sheer, off-putting confidence that you can’t help but engage with it, no matter if what it’s saying is actually worth hearing. That alone is worthy of praise, whether you agree with its methods or not.
Birdman is available to stream on Hulu.
