BIRDMAN

(Alejandro Gonzalez Inarittu, 2014)

I liked almost every element of Birdman.
The big gimmick of the film - that it's been made to seem as if it has been shot in one long continuous take - starts off exhausting and nerve-wracking, but as the rhythm of the movie is established and stabilises, it works, becoming spontaneous, and jazzy; even witty in places. It is also crucially stunningly beautiful in places. Emmanuel Lubezki is a genius, and he takes full advantage of all of the surreal sights backstage at a theatre.
That world is vividly captured in all its shabbiness and glamour - this is a sensitively textured film, and that texture is a big part of the film's appeal.
The story is a simple one, but it succeeds in creating tension: A fading movie star named Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) famous for his role as a winged super-hero in the Birdman movies, struggles with his cast, his emotions, his ex-wife and daughter, his critics and his own expectations and issues as he approaches the opening night of the Raymond Carver adaptation he has written, directed and stars in. As that opening approaches and Riggan falls apart, the tension rises, as does the comedy. This is basically a satire of the showbiz world, full of caricatures (the pretentious method actor, the bitter critic, the desperate ageing Leading Lady) and broad moments, but some of it is hilarious.
The cast do a better job with those caricatures than anybody could have expected. Keaton has always been an underrated actor, but here he makes Riggan a haunted man, torn between his ego and his needs, his moods swinging wildly. He seems without vanity here. Edward Norton plays Mike Shiner, a pompous New York stage actor, who is most himself playing somebody else, and he makes him relatable and human and oddly affecting. He is also hilarious and hugely annoying. Emma Stone is Riggan's daughter, fresh from rehab and angry at her father and the world, and she makes a cliche of a part moving and fascinating, and her scenes with Norton may be the best in the film. Naomi Watts and Andrea Riseborough are the two actresses in the play, struggling with their leading men and their insecurities, and they both do quite a lot with not very much.
The score, improvised on drums by Antonio Sanchez, is perfect for the scattered nervous energy Inarittu is trying to create, and gels well with the photography.
So: I liked all of that. I'm just not sure it all adds up to much at all. It is a dense, intoxicating cinematic experience, but it doesn't provoke much beyond admiration at the technical feat of its making and the acting. It is saying something about the nature of creativity and what makes each of us special, but it says that in 5 minutes. Much of the rest of the time it is saying embarrassing things about pop culture (Superhero movies are BAD!!) and social networking (Twitter is RIDICULOUS!!), while those caricatured characters inevitably lead to more than a few caricatured plot eventualities.
Inarittu's big statement (and yes, he always has one) seems to be revealed in the final scene, when Riggan's powers (previously assumed to be either a magic realist flourish or confined to his imagination) appear to be real. Is he saying that we all have such magic inside us, but that the world means that we focus on other, less important qualities? Or is that final shot just his daughter moving into his fragile headspace?
It is all a bit vague, a bit studiedly ambiguous. Which feels like a bit of a cop-out.

BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD

(Benh Zeitlin, 2012)

There are things here to like. Young Quevenshane Wallis is magnetic and likeable as our narrator-heroine, Hush Puppy, and the majority of the others in the non-professional cast are fresh and believable in this world. Zeitlin's camera picks out a few stunning images, mainly of the Louisiana coast in all its astonishing, often desolate beauty. Some of the production design of the ramshackle structures in "the Bathtub", where Hush Puppy lives with her ailing, cranky father Link, is imaginatively, funkily visualised. And there is an unmistakeable, and powerful - if slightly cheap - pathos to that father-daughter relationship that carries the film through its more annoying later stretches.
And yet. This post-Katrina fantasy of a lovingly eccentric (fictional) community felt entirely fake to me, a piece of designer tourism with the aesthetics of a Levis advert, a contrived narrative and characters so cutesily eccentric they were at best silly, and at worst infuriating. This village lies on the wet side of a Louisiana levee, and when a great, Katrina-esque storm comes and the waters rise, the few remaining residents band together for survival.
This is all seen through Hush Puppy's eyes and overlaid with her naive, poetic, utterly overwritten musings about life and nature and meaning. They play like a bad attempt at Terrence Malick, and are compounded by Zeitlin's decision to depict the prehistoric Aurochs imagined (or are they..?) by Hush Puppy, thawed out by the melting of the ice caps and on the loose in the flooded Bathtub.
On top of that is a strangely bombastic, euphoric, awfully familiar indie-sounding score by Zeitlin and Dan Romer. The story ricochets across tones and registers - from seemingly realist drama to coming of age story to epic adventure - but never loses its essential tweeness, which becomes especially problematic when it attempts to address the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in its portrayal of the Bathtub family forcibly evacuated and blandified by a government who try to tame our heroine by putting her in a dress. This is a film which superficially seems joyous and simple, yet actually feels cynical and a touch laboured in its motives and stylistic tropes. It should be charming, but instead its charmless.