![]() ![]() What “Birdman” squawks at, though, is not just the comic-book cravings that have convulsed the movie industry of late but the more enduring follies of the dramatic profession, as it brims with special pleading and quivers at the thought of sagging fame. ![]() The lurking joke here is that, although Mike derides Hollywood for its “cultural genocide,” Norton himself played the Incredible Hulk, in 2008. A replacement is needed fast, and, as Riggan’s long-suffering friend, Jake (Zach Galifianakis), explains, the choice is narrow: Woody Harrelson is doing another “Hunger Games,” Michael Fassbender is on “X-Men” duty, and Robert Downey, Jr., is soldered tight to “Iron Man.” Luckily, Mike Shiner (Edward Norton), another big name, is free. At rehearsal, a member of the cast is felled by a tumbling arc light. His daughter, Sam (Emma Stone), who is fresh out of rehab, and helping with the production, can often be found on the theatre roof, perched on a perilous ledge. Many folk, like the Times theatre critic Tabitha Dickinson (Lindsay Duncan), presume that he is heading for a fall, and he certainly surrounds himself with plunging, of every sort. His career path has followed that of Icarus, and, in a bid to avoid splashdown, and to restore his credentials, Riggan has chosen to direct and star in a play, adapted by himself from a Raymond Carver tale, on Broadway. He can barely summon the energy to remove his own wig. He was Birdman: he could fly, destroy his foes with a magic whoosh, and use his telekinetic skills to move random objects at will. Twenty years ago, Riggan, too, played a superhero, with a movie franchise to himself. The Bat-Mantle has rested uneasily on Keaton’s shoulders ever since, and something similar weighs upon his character, Riggan Thomson, in “Birdman.” His performance in “Beetlejuice” (1988) was halfway between a rush and a rash, and what drove his Bruce Wayne to fight crime, in “Batman” (1989), was not so much civic outrage as a rich man’s anxiety and ennui at supper with Kim Basinger, he confessed that he had never been in his own dining-room before, and, in “Batman Returns” (1992), he spat out vichyssoise as if it were chilled hemlock. It stars Michael Keaton, who has always behaved onscreen as if he knew that there was a raging mosquito bite somewhere on his person but could not quite locate it. ![]()
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