Making The Comeback On The Weary Comeback Trail-Michael Keaton’s The Birdman  

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

The Birdman, starring Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, 2014

 

Some people get plenty of fame (or infamy), enough to last a lifetime, and some as the Pop artists extraordinaire Andy Warhol noted get fifteen minutes of fame. But what about a guy, a guy who got plenty of fame back in the day as an cinematic comic book-type action hero, well, as Birdman, complete with sequels, and who kind of fell beneath the radar once he stopped doing that role, and had been searching for something would give him his big comeback, and enhance his status as a creative artist and not just a comic book cut-out. Well then you have the premise, or one of the premises, behind the Michael Keaton comeback film, The Birdman.

Here is the beauty of this storyline. Everybody with any artistic temperament has written off Hollywood as mere tinsel town all glitter, gimmicks and no substance, written off the whole thing as a safe place for airheads. So Riggan Thomson (played by Michael Keaton), washed up in the film business, decides after a long hiatus to go to New York City, to Broadway and the “real” theater to make his comeback in a play he had written, would direct and act in. A play based on a small idea put out a couple sentences by the very real great short story writer, Raymond Carver. Of course a washed up actor trying to make a comeback is going to have about eight million problems making the transition, especially since virtually nobody thinks the thing will float. And in the end it doesn’t, or doesn’t solve Riggan’s nagging problem of taking himself seriously, or having people like the bitchy Times “make or break” theater critic take him seriously, of having his ex-wife taking him seriously, of having his “recovering” daughter theater assistant taking him seriously, of having his current not pregnant actress girlfriend taking him seriously, of Mike Shiner (played by Edward Norton), a serious Broadway actor taking him seriously, hell, of his alter ego ghost of Birdman taking him seriously. So throw in a little “magical realism” (Riggan taking flight in New York City and not being shot down by half the scrambled U.S. Air Force) and “super-realism” (his actually shooting himself at the end of the play in the nose in a fit of hubris) and a welcome comeback performance by the much missed Keaton and you have a very nice dark, dark comedy. Even Raymond Carver would chuckle at this one.