Alejandro G. Inarritu‘s Birdman (Fox Searchlight, 10.17), an audacious, darkly hilarious serving of snap-crackle brilliance and psychological excavation par excellence, blew the roof off the Werner Herzog theatre last night. I was giddy, ecstatic, swooning as I half-stumbled into the night air…so was almost everyone I spoke to about it over the next two or three hours. Okay, not everyone but those who were hungry and adventurous and receptive enough to revel in a work of reaching, swirling genius…pig heaven!
Like I said on Twitter last night, it’s an all-but-guaranteed Oscar nominee in several categories — Best Picture, Best Director (Inarritu), Best Actor (Michael Keaton), Best Original Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (Edward Norton), Best Supporting Actress (Emma Stone), Best Cinematography (Emmanuel Lubezki), Best Editing, etc.
Birdman is not just a visual groundbreaker — not actually a single seamless, roving Steadicam shot from start to finish but a wonderful illusion of this. It’s more profoundly a searcher, reacher and a mad leaper of a film with one live-wire, mad-rodent performance after another. Everyone sings and dances and somersaults in this tag-team circus but Keaton is the leader and the daddy. He opens himself up and slices in like a surgeon in an awesome, at times unsettling tour de force. Whether he wins the Best Actor Oscar or not, you can absolutely call him the Comeback Kid.
