Review of Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014) by The__Showman — 17 Feb 2015

Birdman or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance is an American Black Comedy directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu. This movie is highly appreciative for it camera work and editing. Emmanuel Lubezki (Cinematographer), Douglas Crise and Stephen Mirrione (Editors) deserves a big round of applause for most intensive care they took for this film as the whole movie looks like a single cut.

This style of single-cut making is highly comparable to Alfred Hitchcock's 'Rope' which is an epic dramatic thriller. Although this movie 'Birdman' is touted to be a Black Comedy, it lacks that F*****g comedy because it is a drama based on a drama and what we hear most of the time is 'F**K'.

You will get to know the theme of the movie at the pre-climax and it is hard for a common audience to sit 100 minutes listening to the word F**K and try to understand its meaning metaphorically. This story is about an impatient orthodox director cum actor who is trying to make a 60 year old miserable drama to reach this generation audience and believes that, it will redeem his career.

Michael Keaton did a wonderful job and he is the heart and soul of this movie. But the misery is his fight with his own alternative character who is hampering him to be some other who the world really likes.

This melodrama is throughout the movie and for a normal cine-goer, it is a painful watch. Do watch this movie if you want to really know how cinematography and editing looks like and if you are ardent fan of Micheal Keaton.

Else forget it.