Michael Keaton and Me Part One: Birdman
I didn’t watch a lot of the movies that were nominated for Academy Awards this year, but I did recently watch Birdman. Was it the Best film I saw this year? Sadly, no. That dubious honor goes to the LEGO Movie. But I’m not a member of the Academy, so what do I know? Birdman was however worthy of praise, and far and away the weirdest movie I saw in the last year.
(Batman T-shirt from our Batman Hoodie collection.)
Michael Keaton, whose Birdman costume was molded from his own body form of over 20 years ago when he played Batman, did not win the Oscar for Best Actor. In fact, none of the nominated cast of Birdman won their respective statues, despite being front-runners and hailed with tons of praise by critic and fans alike. Were they robbed? Yeah, maybe.
Birdman is a funhouse mirror play-within-a-movie about a former blockbuster success star who made superheroes mainstream now a relic of his glory days, slipping ever more into madness and trying to prove he’s more than the gruff voice behind the mask, even if he doesn’t believe it himself. It’s kind of like if David Lynch directed Magnolia, and it was supposed to be a family comedy of errors. It was funny, but less funny ha-ha and more funny-weird. Spoilers: you get to see old Batman beat the sissy slapping crap out of former Incredible Hulk, so that’s great.
