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Birdman (new Alejandro González Iñárritu film)

Started by Noodle Lizard, December 01, 2014, 02:39:37 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Sam

It got a round of applause when I saw it, full screening at the Odeon, lots of lads and seeming non- film buffs. People laughed a lot, no talking over film, no one standing up and denouncing it at the end.

The critic thing:

The stand off in the bar, apart from being maybe Keaton's best scene in the film, is quite nuanced. The critic is essentially right about the trashiness of celebrity and the pity of the declining standards. However, he is also right in his impassioned cry about risk. She still gets the last word in, and doesn't necessarily come of it the worst. The fact she writes a good review shows that she was swayed by either his standing up for himself in the bar and/or the performance in the play.

The lesbian kiss:

Didn't seem included for titilation. I read it as them almost going through the motions of the cliche because that's what they think is expected as highly strung artists.

Things I loved:

The swooping movement through different tableaux when you see the dream sequence/reindeer bit for the first time. So dreamlike and fluid.

Edward Norton's perfomance of an actor doing a performance when he first appears, and all the scenes backstage around it, genuinely funny and hysterical. I thought there was a lot of depth, shown not told, to the vulnerability of the character and his awareness of his own self and its projection.

Zach Galafalanaka - Very funny performance. Like a warmer Sean Penn in Carlito's Way.

The drum score. Used brilliantly from the opening titles and throughout. Lovely contrast with the Mahler and sweeping classical cues. Fun and non-instrusive use of diegetic/non-diegetic tensions

Emma Stone's (I thought truthful) rant about irrelevance in the social media age.

The Tiny Hammmer in the Balls speech - Not so much for the laugh-out loud dialogue but the facial acting of Keaton.

Artist on the verge of breakdown has been done a lot, but he plays a blinder with it, every facet of human emotion and experience is in there. I can't think of any better acting than this.

The shift in tone to the magic hour wet beach photography (very end of Tree of Life) was a nice exhalation before the (flawed) coda.

This is up there with Under the Skin for the best film of the decade I've seen so far. A totally different film but both embarrassments of riches that push the limits of filmmaking grammar and aesthetics.

jaydee81

I can't help thinking this is the kind of film Gondry should have made.
It really is reminiscent of some of his best music videos (the single take of the Lucas With The Lid Off video, or the recurring drummer from the Let Forever Be video).

Pity that he never really got to make films with such a sense of 'wow'. And when he did get to make a film on purely his own terms, it was the Science of Sleep and was fucking boring. Anyway... I digress.

Sam


popcorn

#64
Quote from: jaydee81 on January 08, 2015, 05:51:22 PM
I can't help thinking this is the kind of film Gondry should have made.
It really is reminiscent of some of his best music videos (the single take of the Lucas With The Lid Off video, or the recurring drummer from the Let Forever Be video).

It reminded me a lot of Gondry and also Kaufman (Adaptation, Synecdoche).

popcorn

#65
Spoiler alert
I think the ending could have been cut if they'd also cut the bit where we see him loading the gun. That way we might not know for sure if he'd really shot himself, which could be interesting, and it would have been less flagged and predictable.
[close]


Quote
The drum score. Used brilliantly from the opening titles and throughout. Lovely contrast with the Mahler and sweeping classical cues. Fun and non-instrusive use of diegetic/non-diegetic tensions

Well observed, and I loved it too. Reminded me of Wes Anderson.

Noodle Lizard

I echo pretty much everything Sam said.

By the way, this is "available" now, but I really recommend seeing it in the cinema.  My friend back in the UK watched it at home, perhaps unconvinced by my praise, but has since said he wants to watch it in the cinema as well.  And he's notoriously hard to please (moreso than I, Noodle Lizard).

BritishHobo

Indeed. I'm so glad I sought it out, I would have really regretted missing the chance to see it on the big screen. Yet it's also the first time in ages, perhaps since I was a kid watching some big excited film, that I've left the cinema intending to buy it the moment it comes out on DVD/Blu-Ray.

Noodle Lizard

First film in a good long while I've wanted to rewatch almost immediately, yes.  I'll probably give it a second spin tonight.

Junglist

The audio is pretty bad on the leaked copies btw. I watched it but won't give it a proper opinion until I've seen it proper.

BritishHobo

I'd watched Ratatouille (spoilers for that family animated movie about talking rats to follow!) the night before, and it was quite fun to see the strong similarities in their big speeches about critics and criticism. Course, Ratatouille has
Spoiler alert
the critic come to the realisation that he's in the wrong and deliver the speech himself
[close]
, but I was pretty amused by the link, especially both having very similar lines about artists offering up everything they have, and critics taking absolutely no risk in tearing that down.

I'll avoid actually getting into that debate here, which would be derailing and possibly tedious. Just a neat moment of serendipity I had. Also not an accusation of plagiarism, which I'm suddenly aware this sounds very much like.

Noodle Lizard

Birdman: If You've Seen Ratatouille, Don't Bother With This One (The AV Club)

Puce Moment

I also found the film Gondry-esque and Kaufman-esque, and in the case of the latter, perhaps this explains why I'm so lukewarm about it.

Somebody a few pages back mentioned that the humour is occasionally out of place or misfires and I have to agree. In particular I found all of the material around Norton's penis to be quite unfunny and broad.

I have to add this to my ever-growing list of post-1999 films that have an incredible central performance within a film that is overall unimpressive (for me).

Sam

The boner stuff was in step with the rest of the film, which focused on the corporeal and the visceral. He is a character like Riggan through whom the film explores impotence of various kinds. It also mirrors the up and down (in Norton's case literally), the highs and lows of experience and expression.

The broad comedy was too silly and lighthearted to be annoying, like it is when deployed more nastily and cynically into wholly bad films. What's more likely to date it is the takes on social media (accurate now, but may be quaint in the future) and the named celebrities, Bieber, Clooney et al.

For the record, I found the Ratatouille speech sour and preachy in a way that Birdman's wasn't.

I'm quite surprised at the lukewarm reception in some quarters, 90% of it is a flawless and crazed piece of genius filmmaking. 'Unimpressive' is the opposite of what I thought. Narratively and tonally, the coda is less effective, but other than that - like I said - it's an embarrassment of riches.

Pit-Pat

Quote from: Puce Moment on January 09, 2015, 03:47:15 PM
I found all of the material around Norton's penis to be quite unfunny and broad.

Norton's penis didn't look that broad to me!

Heyo!!


EDIT: I thought it was great by the way - agree with everyone who loved it, particularly that I wish it'd ended five minutes earlier. Though part of me wonders whether
Spoiler alert
it was all a dream, that last bit.
[close]

Noodle Lizard

Quote from: Sam on January 09, 2015, 05:44:49 PMThe broad comedy was too silly and lighthearted to be annoying, like it is when deployed more nastily and cynically into wholly bad films. What's more likely to date it is the takes on social media (accurate now, but may be quaint in the future) and the named celebrities, Bieber, Clooney et al.

Yeah, that was my issue with some of the writing.  Those jokes were just about funny to elicit a knowing chuckle from an audience today, but in years to come (especially with how increasingly transient pop culture is) I don't think they'll hold up.  Luckily, that only accounts for a tiny portion of the script and doesn't negate the countless things about the movie that I think will be remembered for a long time.

Quote from: Sam on January 09, 2015, 05:44:49 PM
I'm quite surprised at the lukewarm reception in some quarters, 90% of it is a flawless and crazed piece of genius filmmaking. 'Unimpressive' is the opposite of what I thought. Narratively and tonally, the coda is less effective, but other than that - like I said - it's an embarrassment of riches.

Me too.  The feeling I was left with after watching it was that so many movies simply don't make the effort anymore, and it made me want to try harder with the stuff I do.  That's a rare thing.


By the way, the leaked screener has really shite audio, so I still recommend the cinema by any means necessary.

Sam

Why do Americans sound so silly saying the names of philosophers? First, Nee-chee now Barth[nb]but fair play for including a reference to Mythologies, however jarring.[/nb]. Fuck off.

Puce Moment

Quote from: Sam on January 09, 2015, 05:44:49 PMThe broad comedy was too silly and lighthearted to be annoying...

Agreed, but I just found it unfunny and lazy.

marquis_de_sad

Quote from: Sam on January 10, 2015, 02:54:06 AM
Why do Americans sound so silly saying the names of philosophers? First, Nee-chee now Barth[nb]but fair play for including a reference to Mythologies, however jarring.[/nb]. Fuck off.

Took me a while to realise he wasn't talking about John Barth.

hummingofevil

Quote from: Sam on January 08, 2015, 05:23:54 PM
It got a round of applause when I saw it, full screening at the Odeon, lots of lads and seeming non- film buffs. People laughed a lot, no talking over film, no one standing up and denouncing it at the end.

The critic thing:

The stand off in the bar, apart from being maybe Keaton's best scene in the film, is quite nuanced. The critic is essentially right about the trashiness of celebrity and the pity of the declining standards. However, he is also right in his impassioned cry about risk. She still gets the last word in, and doesn't necessarily come of it the worst. The fact she writes a good review shows that she was swayed by either his standing up for himself in the bar and/or the performance in the play.

The lesbian kiss:

Didn't seem included for titilation. I read it as them almost going through the motions of the cliche because that's what they think is expected as highly strung artists.

Things I loved:

The swooping movement through different tableaux when you see the dream sequence/reindeer bit for the first time. So dreamlike and fluid.

Edward Norton's perfomance of an actor doing a performance when he first appears, and all the scenes backstage around it, genuinely funny and hysterical. I thought there was a lot of depth, shown not told, to the vulnerability of the character and his awareness of his own self and its projection.

Zach Galafalanaka - Very funny performance. Like a warmer Sean Penn in Carlito's Way.

The drum score. Used brilliantly from the opening titles and throughout. Lovely contrast with the Mahler and sweeping classical cues. Fun and non-instrusive use of diegetic/non-diegetic tensions

Emma Stone's (I thought truthful) rant about irrelevance in the social media age.

The Tiny Hammmer in the Balls speech - Not so much for the laugh-out loud dialogue but the facial acting of Keaton.

Artist on the verge of breakdown has been done a lot, but he plays a blinder with it, every facet of human emotion and experience is in there. I can't think of any better acting than this.

The shift in tone to the magic hour wet beach photography (very end of Tree of Life) was a nice exhalation before the (flawed) coda.

This is up there with Under the Skin for the best film of the decade I've seen so far. A totally different film but both embarrassments of riches that push the limits of filmmaking grammar and aesthetics.

The critic thing again.

In the conversation she had with Norton they aid something like "you will get a bad review when you (eventually) deserve it". I took from it that she didn't like him and would enjoy giving him a bad review but would not stoop so low to be dishonest in her reviews. I can't see why the same wouldn't apply to Keaton (names have totally lost me). She also reiterated her claim that she was shutting is play after he spoke to her so I think it is reasonable to assume she was won over by the play itself.

---

Anyone here read the Carver play? I know broadly what it's about but it seems to have been slightly overlooked when discussing the themes of the film. The Adaptation shout above is a pertinent one in this respect.


garbed_attic

As for Birdman it was pretty neat.

I felt it was far more ambivalent than it was conclusive... though in a way that I found vaguely irritating. I think we're meant to roll our eyes at Keaton's actorly concerns about integrity and audience approval while simultaneously drawing pathos from them. There was so much in the script that was ironic and / or metatextual there was this need to include material that was on-the-nose sentiment or grossly pat, like the father-daughter stuff. I kind of liked the last shot though since it certainly didn't imply that he had literally flown off into the sky.

Also, I felt that Norton's character suffered from Quagmire syndrome i.e. he's a repellent, predatory, rapey douche but the writers can't help but try to make you like him at some level .... I don't know, I think I just found those rooftop scenes really jarring.

Still, far more coherent than the other Iñárritu films I've seen. Both my friends I saw it with loved it and found it totally different to other films they'd seen lately, far more daring and experimental. However, I've been on a Raul Ruiz binge and just watched The Blind Owl the other night so anything else would have seemed pretty conventional by comparison.[nb]The Blind Owl was incredible.[/nb]

garbed_attic

Finally, I hope Campbell's okay. Those Keaton comics are from a few years back now so maybe the studio got permission to use them. The last time I heard of Campbell it was when she(?) was burning all the Pictures for Sad Children comics people had ordered online.

http://multiversitycomics.com/longform/sad-ramblings-for-kickstarter-on-john-campbell-kickstarters-and-what-it-all-means-opinion/

Sam

Made a mistake of listening to Kermode review. If you're a fan of the film it will make your blood boil, as he repeatedly missed the point like a tit.

hedgehog90

I just saw this film down the local cinny. I enjoyed it veeeeery much.
It was over £10 to see it at a cinema chain in a tiny screening. Fucking £10!!! And there was loads of bleed through from the other screen. It must have been good because I enjoyed the film so much this stuff hardly bothered me.
I can't be arsed to write in any detail why I liked it, I'm sleepy. Consider this post an upvote.

phantom_power

I saw this the other night and thought it was excellent. Not at all what I expected but captivating all the same. Amazing camera work, career-best performances and a great script. I agree with the people saying that the film doesn't have a definitive message. It puts various sides across over the course of the story, even-handedly in my opinion, and lets the viewer decide which is the truest. With the argument with the critic I could completely see her side of things without necessarily agreeing with it, and then I was right there with Keaton as well with his retorts. All of the characters were equal parts awful, likeable, human. That's why I can't get with the idea that all the women are negative characters. ALL the characters are flawed, and all of the characters have redeeming qualities

jaydee81

I think the problem is that the female characters are slightly paper thin in terms of what they get to do on screen (be a bit surly, scream, lesbian kiss) or they are the wife character who basically gets to play a variant on Leslie Ash's powerful three dimensional character of 'Woman Constantly Raising Her Eyes To Heaven' in Men Behaving Badly.
Or they are the critic, where they are inexplicably by a film star blowing his own nose of. Shia Lebouef silently cries.

Sam

The daughter wasn't paper thin, nor was the critic (especially considering her screen time).

Also, 'who they are' is a better consideration than 'what they do'. The above characters felt like real people, with conflicting and nuanced motivatons.

jaydee81

She was out of detox man, and just wanted her dad to embrace social media

jaydee81