Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) Review

Iñárritu stages the whole picture as one apparent take, the camera sliding from dressing room to stage door to Broadway and back without ever cutting where we can see it, and the device works because it matches the man. Riggan cannot get offstage and cannot get away from himself, and neither can the lens. Emmanuel Lubezki lights the theatre in bulb yellow and street sodium and finds real depth in corridors barely wide enough for the rig, which is as fine a piece of camera work as the decade produced.

Michael Keaton plays the cast off blockbuster star with his own history sitting in the room, and Edward Norton turns a monstrous method actor into the funniest work either man has done. Antonio Sanchez scores it with a drum kit, loose and unresolved, so the film never stops feeling anxious. Where we hesitate is the satire, which swings at critics and at ambition itself with more bile than insight, and a closing image that wants two readings without committing to either. The craft carries it anyway.