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.
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