MOVIES
B Y M O L LY T E M P L E T O N
CLIPPED WINGS
Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman is a
sparkling but half-baked flight of fancy
stay as angry as she is in her first scene!) and a less gimmicky tale of
self-doubt. But Iñárritu has made, unexpectedly, a flash-and-dazzle
art-house film, a mashup of technical beauty and half-baked clichés
that never gets to the level of feeling it needs to evoke in order to gel.
His cleverness is held together by Emmanuel Lubezki’s
cinematography, which, via seamless editing, creates the illusion of a
(nearly) endless take.
A
lejandro González Iñárritu
hasn’t directed a feature film
since 2010’s Biutiful, an ago-
nizing, overworked downer
made bearable by Javier Bar-
dem’s mournful performance. His lat-
est, Birdman, also rests squarely on the
shoulders of one put-upon fellow, but
this one has a different set of problems:
Actor-writer-director Riggin Thomson
(Michael Keaton) is struggling to open
a Broadway adaptation of Raymond
Carver’s “What We Talk About When
We Talk About Love.” He’s got all the
normal problems — needy actors, bud-
getary concerns — as well as an alter
ego that speaks to him in the form of
Birdman, the superhero character with which he made his name (as
Keaton himself did with Batman) years ago.
Foul-mouthed and hateful, Birdman is that voice in your ear that
tells you you’re a failure, a fraud, washed-up, worn-out, worthless
— that this arty stuff isn’t what anyone cares about. (It’s not exactly
Black Swan, though some of the feathers seem familiar.) But the false
dichotomy of art versus entertainment is just a distraction, a spare
idea the film tosses in and then leaves alone. The only conflict it’s
really interested in is one man versus himself: the part that soars and
the part that’s always looking down, aware how far there is to fall.
There are, woven into the overstuffed Birdman, interesting ideas
like this one, hints of deeper characters (if only Emma Stone got to
MICH AEL
K E ATON IS
BIRDM AN
The camera slides down hallways and through windows, pans up
to the sky and down again to the next day, finds impossible space in
cramped dressing rooms. Narrow corridors and magical camera
movements, combined with a jittery, percussive score, go a long way
toward creating a claustrophobic tension — but also make you aware
that the tension is manufactured. The characters are sketches; the
movie feints limply at satire; Riggin’s insistence that he’s risking
everything feels forced, his self-centeredness a drum he can’t stop
beating. Why is his self-doubt more relevant than anyone else’s? If
Iñárritu’s Biutiful couldn’t let up with the ugly horrors of life, this one
can’t pause to inject some actual humanity into the neuroses of the
artist. ■
DEAR
WHITE
PEOPLE
Dear readers: Go see this movie. No
film in recent memory addresses
racial tensions in the U.S. with the
contemporary candor and humor of
Dear White People, a debut for director
Justin Simien. Set smack in the middle
of a brewing race war at the fictional
Ivy League Winchester University, the
dark comedy’s reluctant leader
Samantha hosts campus radio show
“Dear White People” (which doles out
advice like “the minimum requirement
of black friends needed to not seem
racist has just been raised to two”).
And it’s sure making some white folks
uncomfortable, including the
university president’s son Kurt. Kurt
acts out by throwing a “black-themed”
party for Halloween complete with
“blackface” and watermelon. A shit
storm ensues. Simien makes it easy to
laugh at these seemingly cartoonish
examples of racism. But how
cartoonish are they? Instances of
blackface and other bigotry are all too
common in Oregon. While the film feels
unfocused at points, it tackles the big
white elephant in the room — and the
politics of sexuality and class — with
grace and wit. (Bijou Metro)
ARTSHOUND
Sniffing out what you shouldn’t miss in the arts this week
You may not know the artist, but you know the art: The Memorial Wall
of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Maya Lin was a
21-year-old Yale undergrad when her design was selected for the
memorial in 1981. In the decades since, the artist and architect has
gone on to create other monumental works such as the 11-acre
installation “Wave Field,” composed of grassy manmade hills that
undulate like waves and, closer to home, The Confluence Project, “six
public art installations at significant points along the Columbia River
system,” for which Lin is working with regional tribes as well as
Oregon and Washington civil groups. One of the Oregon installations,
Sandy River Delta in Troutdale, is complete and a second, Celilo Park
near The Dalles, is in progress.
Hear Lin give the 2014–15 O’Fallon Lecture in Art and American
Culture about the project and her other ongoing work “What Is
Missing?” — a multi-platform interactive piece about environmental
threats — at 7:30 pm Thursday, Nov. 20, at the EMU Ballroom; free.
Another renowned artist and Yale alum is coming to the UO campus
Nov. 20 for a free talk — Rico Gatson, who specializes in sculpture,
painting and video drawing inspiration from the history of racial
injustice in the U.S. While The New York Times has called his work
“didactic,” EW is going to have to disagree with The Grey Lady.
Gatson’s portfolio is filled with bold graphic imagery continuing the
much-needed visual dialogue that Black Panther Party Minister of
Culture Emory Douglas started in the late ’60s. Gatson will speak 6 pm
Thursday, Nov. 20, in Lawrence Hall, room 115.
MAYA LIN
eugeneweekly.com • November 13, 2014
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