Birdman (5/5 Stars)

Or: The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance

When Roger Ebert came upon a long shot in a movie he applied the Goodfellas standard to it. This standard referred to Martin Scorsese’s famous shot of Henry Hill taking out his girlfriend to the local nightclub. The shot starts with Hill handing his car keys to the valet and then taking his girl past the long line outside the club into a backdoor through the kitchen (he slips several guys $20 each) and into the main club area where the proprietor brings out a special table just for him and plants it in the front right next to the band. Hill sits down and his friends at the next table buy him a bottle of wine. The shot ends at 3 minutes 13 seconds. Subsequent filmmakers, inspired by Goodfellas, attempted such long shots of their own and Ebert was continually dismayed by what he saw. The copycats got the technicalities correct but missed the point. What made the long shot in Goodfellas great was not that it took a lot of skill and coordination to pull it off (it did), but that it was the correct way to tell the story. Scorsese was relating to the audience how Henry Hill’s position in the mafia opened doors to him that were closed to regular people. The best way to show that would be how quickly he could get a seat in a crowded at the Copacabana in real time. Add on that the song that played over the entire shot, The Crystal’s “Then He Kissed Me,” and the audience also gets a great idea of how his girlfriend felt about the whole thing, i.e. she was super impressed by it. The long shot in Goodfellas is not a showoffy ‘look what I can do with a camera’ conceit. It is the story. That is what makes a long shot great or not great. After all if just making the shooting process as hard as possible were what made it great, then Hitchcock’s “Rope” is the king of long shots (the entire 90 minute movie only has four takes). But it isn’t and you don't really need to see “Rope.” Hitchcock was just playing around with his camera to see if he could do it. There was no reason that movie needed to be told that way.

Which brings us to Director Alejandro Innaritu and Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s “Birdman,” which is not unlike Rope. I mention the cinematographer because he happens to be the best in the business. He works with Terrance Malick (Tree of Life and To the Wonder) and Alfonso Cuaron (Children of Men and Gravity) and this is not the first time he has worked in incredibly long shots. In other movies though the long shots generally concerned action scenes. (The point of long shots in action scenes is to give a more realistic ‘you are there!’ momentum to what is happening on the screen. If you have ever seen ‘Children of Men’ and ‘Gravity’ you will know what I mean.) But ‘Birdman’ is not an action movie. It is a story about Riggan Thompson a washed up movie star who was last culturally relevant a quarter century ago when he played the very popular comic book character ‘Birdman.’ He enjoyed great success as ‘Birdman’ but soon became unable to do anything else. When he refused to do “Birdman 4,” his career went down the tubes. Now he is staging an adaptation of Raymond Carver’s short story, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” on Broadway. He is desperately trying to become a serious artist again and is fighting against the widespread notion that he is a cartoon character and can’t be anything else.

Now why does this need to be shot in one continuous long shot (It is and it is very technically impressive but nevermind let’s apply the Goodfellas standard). Well, the surprise answer is something I have never seen a long shot in a movie ever accomplish. Surprisingly the way the long shots in this movie are used, they actually take the focus off of what the director is doing and allow the audience to focus much more on the actors. It is really kind of exhilarating. Wactching ‘Birdman,’ a movie about people putting on a play, actually feels like a play. It is even written like a play. By that I mean that characters provide through dialogue much more exposition than usual and at other times go into emotional monologues and speeches at length the way that is generally impossible in movie time. You may have noticed that a three hour play basically feels the same length as a two-hour movie. The whole ‘being there’ aspect of a play elongates the audience’s patience whereas movies generally need to move much faster. But here, because of the extraordinarily skilfull camera of Lubezki, the momentum of the long take gives the actors far more leeway for dramatic performances. And boy, do the cast in the movie rise to the occasion. There is some serious throw down acting in this movie and it occurs all the way through it.

Anchoring the movie as Riggan Thomas is none other than Michael Keaton who if you remember him at all you probably remember him as the Tim Burton era Batman. The role is so perfectly tailored to Keaton’s life (his career did have a downturn after he stopped being Batman) that it provokes the question of whether the movie was inspired by him. Probably not but he is the perfect casting decision on paper and it turns out as well in practice. It is a great performance and should be a cinch for an Oscar nomination. Certainly nobody this year has done “more” acting in a movie. Playing against him as his main antagonist (among many) is Edward Norton as one of those crazy method ‘actors’ that throw fits when they drink water instead of gin in a scene when they are supposed to be drinking f*cking gin. Then there is Zach Galifinakis as Riggan’s best friend, agent, and producer. Zach plays the sane one in this movie, a choice that reminded me of the casting of Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The movie is crazy, so why not cast a crazy comedian as the serious one. It works. I liked it. Rounding out the cast is Naomi Watts (a long time actress and newcomer to Broadway), Emma Stone (who has huge eyes), Andrea Riseborough, and Amy Ryan (divorcee of Riggan). All of them do good jobs even if they don’t get the really big moments like for instance running through Times Square in only underwear with a marching band in the distance. Someone does that, won’t tell you who.

‘Birdman’ is a seamless auditory and visual experience. There is an element of magic in the movie that is not fully explained but after awhile does not really need to be. It feels correct and is fairly understood as an extension of the scene’s emotional tone. There are plenty of details that lend to the overall otherworldliness of the movie. A couple of great ones cherry picked from the movie include the fog machines, the Christmas lights at the liquor store, a Japanese critic, and a certain quote from Shakespeare’s Macbeth at precisely the right time. Birdman is a must see movie. It is one of the best of the year and should at least net Lubezki’s 2^nd Oscar in as many years.

Foxcatcher (4/5 Stars)

The general rule for movies based on true stories is not how closely they follow the facts. That is the job of journalism. No, the general rule is whether the movie would be any good if it were completely fictional. And this strange and sad story of the richest convicted murderor in history, John Dupont, and his relationship with the U.S. Greco-Roman wrestling team, particularly the Olympic champion brothers Mark and David Schultz, does not need to actually be true to be effective. It is fully realized within itself. I suspect the most egregious violation of the true story may be the movie’s condensed time span, which makes it look like all the events took place within a couple of years (take a look at Dave Schulz’s ungrowing kids). Actually the real events took place over a decade, but I feel the makers (Director Bennet Miller et al.) made the right decision in glossing over that. It gives the psychological underpinnings of the tragedy more momentum. This is a very good if hard to watch movie. Hard to watch in the correct way, that is. I will elaborate on that phrase a bit later.

This is a great character study with a trio of great performances by some unlikely actors. Not that we did not know that Steve Carell and Channing Tatum could act. We saw some glimmers of that in Little Miss Sunshine for Carell and a trio of Soderberg movies for Tatum. But we have Oscar worthy transformation happening in Foxcatcher and I suspect most of the critical conversation around this movie will focus intently on just how good are these performances.

Let’s start with the Olympic wrestling brothers Schultz, Mark and David, played by Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo respectively. The most impressive thing right out of the gate is the spot on physicality of the Greco-Roman wrestling practices and matches. I took a year of wrestling in high school so I was looking to see if they got it right. They did and you know how you could tell? There is this great introduction to the brothers as they spar in a practice room. The shot is unbroken and lasts at least a minute or two. By the end of the shot both Channing and Mark are breathing heavily. That’s Greco Roman wrestling for you. It is the most quickly exhausting sport ever invented. Imagine what it would have been like to shoot take after take of any of these scenes. Here Channing is doing some extra overtime heavy lifting. (Mark has no match scenes). Physical performances are generally unnoticed as good acting. For instance, using Channing Tatum’s own career, I don’t recall any critics that praised his dancing in Magic Mike as skillful acting. Well I do and Tatum’s performance here is one of those performances I believe the vast majority of actors in the business would not be able to do. And the physicality of Channing really does matter because the character is extremely introverted and inarticulate. The background of Mark Schultz is one of isolation and alienation. His father left when he was two years old. He moved around the country constantly. He then followed his older brother into wrestling and may have excelled at it dramatically but the sport happens to be unpopular, unwatched, and not even paid. We are introduced to this gold medal winner collecting a $20 check for talking to a grade school classroom of kids about the Olympics. He has to tell the principal to make the check out to Mark Schultz, not Dave Schultz, because Dave is sick and Mark is substituting for him. “We both won gold,” Mark lamely explains. Mark goes back to his one room apartment where he eats Ramen alone.

And then the phone rings and we are introduced to Steve Carell’s version of eccentric millionaire John Dupont. John Dupont happens to be a fan of Greco-Roman wrestling. And since he inherited his millions and has no job, he has taken it upon himself to be the head coach of United States Wrestling. He is neither a wrestler nor a coach but he has a lot of money and is more than willing to pay top dollar for the nation’s best wrestlers. He phrases his desires in patriotic terms. This is good for America. I am a great man of vision. We need to take this country back. Mark Schultz, so obviously marginalized by society, becomes a true believer of sorts. Yes, he will move there and together they will put together a great wrestling team, the best in the world.

John Dupont’s childhood was disturbingly odd. His father left him at two years old. His mother raised him (along with a retinue of servants) at the gigantic Foxcatcher estate. His only friend was a kid his mother paid to hang out with him. John’s mother raises horses. Greco-Roman wrestling has to be the exact opposite sport from equestrian. That should explain quite a bit right there about their relationship. In one telling scene, John’s mother comes over to the gym to watch a practice. Normally John Dupont would just watch the practices, but here he calls all the world-class wrestlers over into a circle and proceeds to teach them Wrestling 101, that is until his mother leaves the room.

Steve Carell’s performance is hard to watch, much like it is hard to be around a person who obviously has no idea how to interact socially with other human beings. Not only has Dupont been isolated from most other living beings all his life his situation is compounded by never having encountered anyone on a level playing basis. He is automatically in charge due to the fact that he is the employer of everyone in the room. The result is a grotesque caricature of a human, someone whose personality feels like you are watching a train wreck in slow motion. Mix in the drugs, alcohol, and guns that Dupont has regular access to and the result is tragedy that in retrospect seems painfully obvious. Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about the story is that Mark and John get along for at least the first couple of years. They are utterly lost people being lost together.

The one sane person is Dave Schultz (played by Mark Ruffalo). Unlike his brother, he got married and had kids once he became an adult. That probably did a lot in making him a regular person. He goes to work for John Dupont to after a couple of years, the money being too good to turn down. But the heart of this story is how he finagles for his brother a way out of the damaging influence of Dupont. Mark, looking for a father figure, is pshycologically stricken when the man he has chosen starts abusing him in various ways. The most dramatic result of this is a scene that reminded me of Robert De Niro’s performance in Raging Bull, arguably the greatest acting performance ever. You will know what I mean. And then Dave Schultz comes in the room and puts his brother back together the only way a truly centered and empathetic person can. It’s kind of beautiful and John Dupont never truly gets Mark back. John Dupont once again loses his only friend in the world. Everyone deserves a nomination. That’s one for Carell, Tatum, and Ruffalo. This is the best-acted movie of the year so far.