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Keaton soars in 'Birdman'

The brilliant, funny ‘Birdman’ stars Michael Keaton as a washed up movie star trying to prove himself on Broadway, alongside Ed Norton

Michael Keaton as Riggan in  "Birdman." (AP Photo/Fox Searchlight, Atsushi Nishijima)
Michael Keaton as Riggan in "Birdman." (AP Photo/Fox Searchlight, Atsushi Nishijima)Read more

SOME years ago, somebody in Hollywood figured out that you could get a near-certain Oscar nomination by making movies that flattered the creative process.

Every year at this time they arrive, timed for awards consideration, and every year I get ready to complain about their craven statue-sniffing.

How inconvenient, then, that "Birdman," an act-a-thon about acting and stardom and Hollywood - and a dead-certain Oscar nom for star Michael Keaton - turns out to be such great fun.

It features Keaton as washed-up film star Riggan Thompson, famous once in the 1980s for playing a super-hero called "Birdman," now desperately mounting a Broadway comeback, adapting a complex Raymond Carver story.

It's a suicidally ambitious enterprise, and nobody feels this more keenly than Riggan, whose desperation and need register strongly in his lined face (Keaton is outstanding in this role). Both emotions intensify as the frenzied rehearsals proceed, time compresses and the buzzards circle Riggan and his play.

Popping in are his out-of-rehab daughter (Emma Stone), there to remind him of his failures as a father and lack of relevance to her online generation. His ex-wife (Amy Ryan) wishes he'd break a leg, and he's not sure how she means it. His new co-star and girlfriend (Andrea Riseborough) wants a relationship status report and he's getting bad news from his manager best friend (Zach Galifianakis) - one of the cast members has been hit by a loose stage light and is out.

A terrible accident.

Except that it's not terrible - the actor was lousy (kudos to Jeremy Shamos for allowing himself to play a bad actor, and doing it so well).

And maybe it's not an accident.

One of director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's ingenious conceits is that Riggan believes he caused the accident - via the powers of telekinesis that he somehow absorbed from the superhero (known as Birdman) that he played 30 years ago. Birdman also appears to him as a delusion, whispering doubt and criticism in his ear.

Is Riggan nuts?

The movie's bigger question: Does anybody in this line of work have to go a little bit crazy in order to do good work?

Driving Riggan the most crazy is a Hollywood-hating Broadway hotshot hamed Mike Shiner (Ed Norton, spoofing his own reputation for on-set difficulty), who replaces the injured actor and raises the play's profile - in a way that undercuts Riggan's own role.

Keaton and Norton, playing rivals, feed off each other in a way that is hugely entertaining. Further amplifying the movie's energy is another of Inarritu's clever ideas - he's filmed the movie as one long take. It's a stunt that helps feed the daredevil immediacy appropriate to the story.

So, the movie is technically brilliant, it's beautifully acted and it's an order of magnitude more amusing than anything the downbeat Inarritu ("21 Grams," "Babel") has made to date.

Having said all of this, the movie has some screwy ideas. Inarritu uses the Movie Superhero genre as shorthand for all that is wrong with globalized, stupid, commercial Hollywood.

And, yes, those movies can be bad. They can also attract talent like, say, Christopher Nolan, who uses the format to challenge a large audience with important themes.

They attract great actors as well - in fact, it was Keaton, paired with Jack Nicholson in "Batman," who showed how great actors could elevate material.

Keaton's been doing that for 30 years.

In "Birdman," he's still doing it.

Online: ph.ly/Movies