I’m not going to do a Scott Tobias, but Birdman does invite a kick-up-the-backside opening sentence. Iñárritu is like a charlatan you want to expose – because this is just so ridiculous, from the first scene to the last. Fucking mayhem. Imagine being high on energy drinks and having one tiny room to contain yourself. This is the sort of intensity we’re dealing with here.
It’s like you always
wanted Withnail to succeed there at the end, and throughout these 2 hours you
get a fleeting glimpse of that actually happening. Not a pretty sight. It is
pretentious, over the top, deliciously silly. It has a goddamned drum score,
and you will never once find it moving or remotely believable. The fact that
the most irrelevant demographic in the world chose to give it the Oscar will
not make me hate it: Birdman is a
made-up world whose make-up you want to wear. What else do you need cinema
for?..
The short taxi moment
towards the end was pure genius. If it takes a pretentious fraudster to do that
– I guess I will just have to accept it.
P.S. Birdman tells about a Broadway adaptation
of Raymond Carver. Speaking of which. If you are ever going to start writing
short stories (I'd advise a career in astrology) – try to get within the shooting distance of something like
“Neighbours” or “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”.
