After how much I dug Birdman last year, I was definitely
looking forward to seeing more work from director Alejandro González Iñárritu.
So, in prep for this release, I checked out his other filmography… and noticed
something disconcerting. While I undoubtedly consider Birdman to be the best
film he’s done to date, it’s also the most unlike everything else he’s made so
far. Iñárritu’s usual method of story-telling is with numerous interweaving
character arcs, some of them seemingly completely disconnected from each other,
to convey a specific theme. Birdman, by contrast, is so linear that it is shot
and edited to look like a single continuous take (for the most part) and
focuses mainly on a single character. It’s kind of like claiming to be a fan of
Darren Aronofsky, but saying your favourite film of his is The Wrestler; it isn’t
exactly the best representation of the man’s work as a whole. With this new
information, I began to anticipate today’s release more shakily than I was
expecting to. However, indicative of standard oeuvre or not, I will give this
film the benefit of the doubt regardless; I’m not going to just badmouth a Leo
DiCaprio film purely based on principle.
