After every Oscars ceremony, fans of the less successful films tend to feel aggrieved. This year’s injured parties are the emotional time-lapse drama Boyhood (directed by Richard Linklater), for which Patricia Arquette won best actress but nothing else; and the excellent Selma (directed by Ava DuVernay), for which David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King should have won best actor but didn’t. (It won best original song for Glory). The Oscars, though, aren’t a marker of absolute quality: whatever film triumphs usually has something going for it, and winning the best picture award should be treated about as reliably as a recommendation from a friend who has seen lots of films.
Unfortunately this year’s most successful film, with four Oscars, including best picture, best director and best screenplay, is in my opinion not worth your time. Birdman is a turkey. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s film is fresh in my mind since I saw it last night on a hunch that it would do well. The plot has promise: Michael Keaton is a fading Hollywood star haunted by his one success playing a superhero called Birdman in the 1990s. To gain artistic credibility and relaunch his career, he is directing a theatrical version of the Raymond Carver short story, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”, which he also stars in. Keaton’s character has to deal with an ex-wife he still loves, a daughter he neglected who is just out of rehab and the nagging sense that he is a mere celebrity rather than a serious artiste.
The problem is that Iñárritu’s direction is as self-indulgent as his main character’s. Birdman gives the impression of being filmed in one take: the camera swoops down the corridors of a Broadway theatre, into the dressing rooms and on to the stage where the play is being performed. It’s skilfully done but the visual relentlessness gives the viewer little space to reflect on the action, and soon gets exhausting. The swelling music—Tchaikosvky, Mahler, John Adams—manipulates our emotions while also tipping the wink that it’s doing so—a type of ironised sentimentality that amounts to having your cake and eating it.