1. Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

Birdman opens with a levitating cross-legged Riggan Thompson (Michael Keaton) being heckled by the Luciferian voice of his former role as Birdman. Throughout the film, Birdman revisits Riggan, stroking his ego and egging him on to return to his superhero form. “You tower over these theater douchebags. You’re a movie star… You are a god.” All the while Riggan is determined to validate himself as an actor—as an artist—with his Broadway production, an adaptation of Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Riggan is not only the star of the production but also the director and the writer.

When a stage light falls on the key supporting actor’s head, Riggan is forced to re-cast. He rattles off a list of Hollywood stars to his agent Jake (Zach Galifianakis); Jeremy Renner? He’s an Avenger. Fassbender? Doing X-Men. Each proposed substitute is involved in the same buttered-popcorn-franchise-blockbusters that cast a shadow on Riggan’s life. That’s when revered thespian Mike Shiner, played ferociously by Edward Norton, appears. If Birdman is the preacher of fame and worship, Shiner is the pope of artistic integrity. Shiner is a method actor who drinks real gin during a dinner scene, and attempts to have actual sex with Lesley (Naomi Watts) during a bedroom scene, all in front of a live audience. Emblematically, without an audience Shiner is impotent. All the world’s a stage, right?

The war between reality and fantasy has been waged. Alone, Riggan performs feats of levitation and telekinesis. Sending lamps and shelves crashing with a flick of his wrist, soaring through the New York cityscape, and even blowing up a car as he walks by. Birdman is a surrealist painting begging you to believe it’s real. And you may give in. Director Alejandro González Iñárritu leaves conflicting clues whether Riggan really possesses superpowers and what is really real. Conspicuous shots of fiery objects streaking through the atmosphere, the film’s score physically manifesting itself, and powers becoming moot once a peer enters the room. It’s a profoundly funny bending of meta-reality, but it’s also subtle when it needs to be. The concept is kept at bay, playing a supporting role to Riggan’s struggle with redemption and relevancy in both the art and the family he fell in love with. He struggles to mend familial relationships between his ex-wife Sylvia (Amy Ryan) and his fresh-out-of-rehab daughter Sam (who is also his assistant, played fearlessly by Emma Stone) that his former Hollywood ego left bruised and neglected. With Birdman Iñárritu manages to grasp at tangible themes like self-acceptance and relevancy and turn them into a lucid, trippy tour-de-force. This is hard to imagine coming from a director known for exhausting non-linear opacity and bleak meditations. Not to mention, it’s so god damn funny! Where has this guy been?! At one point alter ego Birdman taunts, “People, they love blood. They love action. Not this talky, depressing, philosophical bullshit.” You get it.

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