3 more reviews

1. ›Birdman an Oscar winning movie@steemychicken11242d

   Well, of all the movies that have won Best Picture in the last decade, the one I can't stand the most is Birdman.

   Ok, there are some that are just plain bad (The King's Speech), others that are pointless (The Artist), others irritating (Argo) and others incurably mediocre (Green Book) but, to speak in academic film theory terms, more Birdman breaks it. Inarritu's film managed to tick so many cinematic boxes that annoy me in subtle but real ways that I was actually struck by how micro-annoying I found it as I watched it.

   I'm sick of this kind of self-righteous Hollywood self-referentiality that's just used as a meta surface gimmick without hinting at anything deeper or more meaningful. After all, everyone knows that festivals and awards and critics love movies-about-how-movies-are-made, even if the movies themselves have nothing to say about cinema except to regurgitate clichés and platitudes about the tortured artist, the clash of art with commerce, the comparison of the screen with the blackboard, the fading of fame and glory, success and failure, authenticity and hypocrisy, high and low culture and all that which Birdman deals with in a completely naive Manichean way through absolute and simplistic dipoles.

   This is basically what bothers me about Birdman. That it's full of pretentious things that are there to give the impression of depth and meaning, masking the minimal effort the film makes to actually demonstrate the existence of that depth/meaning through its drama and imagery. If we remove the ironic play with Michael Keaton's biography and Emmanuel Lubezki's one-shot illusion (both the performance of one and the cinematography of the other are the best elements of Birdman) and various other tricks that are at heart extraneous and irrelevant to the dramatic/thematic core of the film, then what is left of the film?

   The male characters are unbearably banal, the female characters are unacceptably poorly written, the themes the film tackles are treated in the most clichéd self-indulgent way, and in the end whatever messages it wants to get across have become such chewed fodder that they've ended up unsustainable. In the end, everything that Birdman pretends to present in a complex and ambiguous way ends up, if you strip away the meta/experimental cloak, over-simplified and trite. It simply replaces the classic Hollywood self-sucking with Hollywood self-contempt. The same thing in essence, since criticism is something different from simple reversal.

   I generally don't like the category of "fraud" at all when it comes to art and I really dislike the category of "pseudoculture", but I feel that if there is any mainstream auteur filmmaker who is actually "guilty" (well within multiple quotes of course) of such things this is Inarritu. I already cringed at his over-ambitious dramas EVERYTHING CONNECTS MAN and VIOLENCE DEFINES OUR LIVES, but here when the ambition turned to the character of art itself and the artist's narcissistic self-torture it seemed clear to me that Inarritu wants to tackle big and complex ideas without having the proper cinematic (ie narrative, thematic and aesthetic) tools to do so. Or at least not in the original and groundbreaking way the movie pretends to do.

   To close the post in a hot way, Birdman is a classic example of a movie that pretends to be smarter than it really is, in turn making the audience feel as smart as they want to feel when watching movies in general , even if their content doesn't actually warrant it.

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2. ›Birdman (2014) review: The mess behind the scenes.@richardalexis1284d

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   Since Birdman (Or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) swept the Oscars a couple of years ago, I felt a deep fascination for this film, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu (One of the most important Latino directors of the past decade along with Alfonso Cuarón) we were dealing with a curious hodgepodge that seemed to tackle so many ideas with sheer skill, a quality I'm glad to admit hasn't faded over time.

   From his letter of introduction, there was a lot of cloth to cut: Birdman was a film built as if it were a sustained long shot, where we would follow the story of a film actor with the best years of his career behind him and willing to revive it with a work of theater, in this way, we would follow all the conflicts that would arise behind the scenes, while from time to time one or another surreal element slipped through.

   With Michael Keaton in the leading role (A creative decision that went quite deep if we consider his importance in the current blockbuster scene since he starred in Tim Burton's vision of Batman in the mid-80s, founding all contemporary superhero cinema, Even if I didn't want to), Birdman comes across as both a satire and an homage to modern cinema, acknowledging the pretentious nature of modern cinema, but accepting that behind all the chaos there is room for genuine passion.

   It's a mesmerizing film, operating on a very superficial level but also riddled with hidden meanings and subtly installed themes, it's a surprisingly intimate window into all that it is to build a show, yet at the same time it feels like an autobiography (Unconscious) to the ego of its own creator.

   Aesthetically it is beautiful, each character is surprisingly dense, its soundtrack generates an absurd level of tension, and finally, it manages to leave us thinking for a long time.

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   Despite the fact that he focuses on theatre, in one way or another Birdman allows us to understand how cinema works from a very different perspective, raw, uninhibited, but passionate.

   

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   Desde que hace un par de años Birdman (Or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) arrasó con los Oscars sentí una profunda fascinación por este filme, dirigida por Alejandro González Iñárritu (Uno de los directores latinos más importantes de la década pasada junto a Alfonso Cuarón) nos encontrábamos ante una mezcolanza curiosa que parecía abordar muchísimas ideas con una habilidad absoluta, una cualidad que me alegra reconocer no se ha diluido con el paso del tiempo.

   Desde su carta de presentación había mucha tela que cortar: Birdman era una película construida cómo si fuese un largo plano sostenido, en dónde seguiríamos la historia de un actor de cine con los mejores años de su carrera detrás y dispuesto a revivirla con una obra de teatro, de esta manera, seguiríamos todos los conflictos que surgirían detrás del escenario, mientras que de vez en cuando se colaba uno que otro elemento surrealista.

   Con un Michael Keaton en el rol protagonista (Una decisión creativa que calaba bastante hondo si consideramos su importancia en el panorama del blockbuster actual desde que protagonizó la visión de Batman de Tim Burton a mediados de los 80s, fundando todo el cine de superhéroes contemporaneo, aunque no lo quisiera), Birdman aparenta ser simultáneamente una sátira y un homenaje al cine moderno, reconociendo la naturaleza pretenciosa del mismo, pero aceptando que detrás de todo el caos existe espacio para la pasión genuina.

   Es un filme hipnotizante, que funciona en un plano muy superficial pero también está plagado de significados ocultos y temas sutilmente instalados, es una ventana sorprendentemente íntima a todo lo que representa construir un espectáculo, pero a la vez se siente como una autobiografía (Inconsciente) al ego de su propio creador.

   Esteticamente es preciosa, cada personaje es sorprendentemente denso, su Banda sonora genera un nivel de tensión absurda, y finalmente, logra dejarnos pensando durante un buen rato.

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   A pesar de que se centra en el teatro, de qlfuna manera u otra Birdman nos permite entender el funcionamiento del cine desde una óptica muy diferente, cruda, deshinibida, pero apasionada.

   

   Twitter/Instagram/Letterbox: Alxxssss

   

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3. ›Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)@lionsuit3044d

   

   This may be my favorite film of 2014. It is definitely in my top three from that year.

   Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu Written by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Armando Bo, Raymond Carver (play)

   Any cinephile should be aware of this film. Same goes for any creative, really.

   If nothing else, the camera choices, the camera control, and the acting are unreal. Every shot is a long take. They rehearsed extensively in a studio space with the location dimensions taped off on the floor. They blocked out every movement. Once you see the film, you will understand why.

   Above and beyond though, these characters are great, the content, the questions, the story is beautiful. This is a character going into the depths of "Why do we make art?" That's what so much of it was to me, at least. A great great great film.

   Trailer:

   "Critic" Scene:

   Shooting the Times Square Scene:

   "Relevant" Scene:

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