Review of Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014) by Tiberio S — 08 Aug 2017

This is as damn perfect as you can make a movie about showbusiness, being overwhelmed and putting pressure on oneself, and most definitely a peek into the mind of suicide... all shown in the illusion of one glorious unbroken take.

It's inevitable that this nonstop anxiety, this constant moving for weeks at a time, is all going to lead to demise. And when we finally do get a break, a cut in the film, it's to assure us that this man has reached the peak of his insanity and now we're about to settle down.

No, that's just the calm before the storm, the perfect effect for what is about to happen next. We are trapped in a grand delusion, what success has done to entrap our very subject. Birdman is a more proactive Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard, and as an aging male in the business he has an advantage over her, not to mention having worked in an era of sequels and inflated box office.

His fall from stardom is something he's trying to run from, but it chases him and gets clearer as we move into the second half of the film. That the one shot illusion is used represents that this one major beat of insanity is attached to a long string of anxiety-building events - they all equate to this one moment, and one cannot possibly be disconnected from the other.

There's so much meaning in that kind of staging, it's not just there to demonstrate it can be done, not a mere technical marvel, but a total view of life in the mind of a suicidal.