'Birdman': Michael Keaton in one of the best films ever

At the beginning of Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), Michael Keaton's brooding, jittery Riggan Thomson, a Hollywood star faded from view, is in the lotus position, in his underpants, meditating. In his own mind at least (and isn't that what meditation is all about?), he is doing transcendent stuff.

But maybe it's not just in his mind.

Like its cross-legged protagonist - famous way-back-when as the titular superhero of a blockbuster franchise and now trying to reclaim his career, his legitimacy, and his soul by staging his adaptation of a Raymond Carver story on Broadway - Birdman operates on a whole other plane of existence. It is exhilarating moviemaking, an out-of-the-blue masterwork that ranks as one of the best films of not just the year, but the decade, the century.

Sure, that sounds like hyperbole. But Alejandro G. Iñárritu's fierce, funny, breathless dive into the head of a man in deep trouble will set audiences talking, debating, wobbling with awe.

Shot by Emmanuel Lubezki, who won this year's Oscar for his similarly sinuous cinematography in Gravity, and scripted by Iñárritu with cohorts Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris Jr., and Armando Bo, Birdman is backstage melodrama, a farce in a death mask. It's also a razor-sharp study of warring egos, people in need (of affirmation, of love), and the magic trick of the theater (and movie) experience: men and women rising above themselves to become someone else, something other, and move a crowd in the process.

Keaton, who did his time in cape and cowl for Tim Burton's Batman and Batman Returns, gives a performance drawn from personal and professional experience, but also from the dark, scary recesses of his psyche.

An all-powerful theater critic (Lindsay Duncan) dismisses Riggan as "a Hollywood clown in a Lycra birdsuit." She is manifestly hostile to his grand endeavor to mount his version of Carver's "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" on the proscenium of the St. James Theater. But Riggan has mortgaged his Malibu house, poured his savings into the show, and has brought his daughter, Sam (an awesomely edgy Emma Stone), into the bargain, thinking that having her as his personal assistant will bring them closer. (Wrong, Dad!) Amy Ryan, as Sam's mom, the ex, drops by the dressing room to check on how things are going. What she sees is hardly comforting.

Joining Riggan onstage in the two-couple drama are the noble thespians played by Andrea Riseborough and Naomi Watts, with Edward Norton in the role of Mike Shiner, a man of the theater whose determination to find the "truth" in a character, a play, has made him both revered and reviled. But Shiner sells tickets, says Riggan's hard-pressed pal and producer, Jake (a thankfully low-key Zach Galifianakis), when Shiner is brought in as an eleventh-hour replacement.

The ways in which Shiner pushes Riggan (and everyone else) to the brink supply much of the film's triple-knotted tension. The camera tracks the two men as they sidestep down claustrophobic halls, arguing the lines, their meaning. Shiner, exuding Method-y urgency, takes exception to the prop gun that Riggan waves around in the play's climactic scene; its fakeness takes Shiner out of the moment, and he wants Riggan to use a weapon that is more real, more convincing.

Shiner also can't help himself: He goes after Riggan's daughter, wooing Sam with horny commiseration, with intellect, with certainty. Norton and Stone's rooftop scenes - atop the St. James, looking out on West 44th Street, the din of Times Square in the air - are riveting.

Even the visual effects in Birdman - a superhero conflagration, with exploding helicopters and an otherworldly monster - are better than what you get in Spider-Man or The Avengers. With its improvisatory score (drummer Antonio Sanchez provides a hustling backbeat throughout), its seamless shots, its leaps into the surreal, and then back again into the excruciating, embarrassing real, Birdman ascends to the greatest of heights.

It's a heady view up there, wherever "there" is.

"St. Vincent" 6 p.m. Thursday. *** (out of four stars)

"Birdman" 8:30 p.m. Thursday. ****

Kimmel Center's Perelman Theater, Broad and Spruce Streets. Tickets: $20 per movie; limited availability. Information: www.filmadelphia.org

Birdman  **** (out of four stars)

Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu. With Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts, Zach Galifianakis, Andrea Riseborough. Distributed by Fox Searchlight.

Running time: 1 hour, 59 mins.

Parent's guide: R (profanity, sex, violence, adult themes).

Playing at: 8:30 p.m. Thursday at Perelman Theater, Kimmel Center. To be released in area theaters Oct. 24.

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@Steven_Rea

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