Telluride Film Fest: The New Yorker Reviews “Birdman”

13 Nov Telluride Film Fest: The New Yorker Reviews “Birdman”

We led with the film when we posted our review on Telluride Inside… and Out right after Labor Day weekend. Alejandro Inarritu’s “Birdman” was one of the buzziest films of the 41st annual Telluride Film Festival. With his very insightful, very funny, very smart, spot-on (we think) review of the film in The New Yorker, uber critic Anthony Lane joins a parade of his colleagues who describe the film as a “High Flier.”

Do not go to “Birdman” to relax. It stars Michael Keaton, who has always behaved onscreen as if he knew that there was a raging mosquito bite somewhere on his person but could not quite locate it. His performance in “Beetlejuice” (1988) was halfway between a rush and a rash, and what drove his Bruce Wayne to fight crime, in “Batman” (1989), was not so much civic outrage as a rich man’s anxiety and ennui; at supper with Kim Basinger, he confessed that he had never been in his own dining-room before, and, in “Batman Returns” (1992), he spat out vichyssoise as if it were chilled hemlock. The Bat-Mantle has rested uneasily on Keaton’s shoulders ever since, and something similar weighs upon his character, Riggan Thomson, in “Birdman.”

Twenty years ago, Riggan, too, played a superhero, with a movie franchise to himself. He was Birdman: he could fly, destroy his foes with a magic whoosh, and use his telekinetic skills to move random objects at will. And look at Riggan now. He can barely summon the energy to remove his own wig. His career path has followed that of Icarus, and, in a bid to avoid splashdown, and to restore his credentials, Riggan has chosen to direct and star in a play, adapted by himself from a Raymond Carver tale, on Broadway. Many folk, like the Times theatre critic Tabitha Dickinson (Lindsay Duncan), presume that he is heading for a fall, and he certainly surrounds himself with plunging, of every sort. His daughter, Sam (Emma Stone), who is fresh out of rehab, and helping with the production, can often be found on the theatre roof, perched on a perilous ledge. At rehearsal, a member of the cast is felled by a tumbling arc light. A replacement is needed fast, and, as Riggan’s long-suffering friend, Jake (Zach Galifianakis), explains, the choice is narrow: Woody Harrelson is doing another “Hunger Games,” Michael Fassbender is on “X-Men” duty, and Robert Downey, Jr., is soldered tight to “Iron Man.” Luckily, Mike Shiner (Edward Norton), another big name, is free.