The Student News Site of University of California - San Diego

The UCSD Guardian

The Student News Site of University of California - San Diego

The UCSD Guardian

The Student News Site of University of California - San Diego

The UCSD Guardian

3. Birdman

“Birdman” is made of one image after another. That’s all that can be coherently said about the film. Director Alejandro G. Inarritu (“Amores perros”) crafts an intricate piece of art that refuses to be satisfactorily understood. The film is an enigma. We contemplate its complexity, but we quickly recognize it as unsolvable.

The plot follows Riggan, a former blockbuster actor (Michael Keaton) trying to regain his glory by becoming a “true” artist. Keaton’s character is the epicenter of Inarritu’s violent earthquakes: In “Birdman,” everything seems to be moving and crashing inside Riggan’s disorderly existence. But the film’s chaotic nature is loaded with emotional gunpowder. Every word uttered is a bullet — every gesture resonates with an endless echo. The magical atmosphere is created by Emmanuel Lubezki’s (“Gravity”) miraculous cinematographic trick of presenting “Birdman” in one continuous take. And so we live it as we live our life: Riggan’s madness is our madness — for, in the words of Inarritu in an interview with Rotten Tomatoes, “All of us have a Birdman.”

– Mario Attie, Staff Writer

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