In 'Birdman,' Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu Revives Theme of Resurrection Joe Williams - Post-Dispatch.com
go to original October 31, 2014

Birdman is a black comedy that tells the story of an actor - famous for portraying an iconic superhero - as he struggles to mount a Broadway play. (FoxSearchlight)

Life and death are illusions,” says Alejandro González Iñárritu. “We are in a constant state of transformation.”

The acclaimed director of “Babel,” “21 Grams” and the new film “Birdman” hails from Mexico, where the ghost-themed Day of the Dead is as sacred as Christmas or Easter, but his attitude toward resurrected spirits is more scientific than scriptural. “We have always existed in different forms — carbon, oxygen, water, heat. Maybe heaven is this brief period when the elements realize they’re alive.”

The web of life and the transition to the next phase have been recurring themes in Iñárritu’s films since his debut, “Amores Perros,” in 2000. That Spanish-language sensation traced the intersecting fissures of a car accident, from the underworld of dog-fighting to the penthouse suite of a supermodel. In the English-language “21 Grams,” another car accident is the pivot for a story about a life-saving heart transplant. And in the multilingual “Babel,” three stories on three continents are connected to a random shooting in North Africa.

For the record, those intricately woven films were written by Guillermo Arriaga. With the self-penned “Birdman,”  Inarritu has metamorphosed into a sleight-of-hand trickster. It’s a farce about a fading movie star named Riggan Thompson (Michael Keaton) who tries to transcend his superhero typecasting by adapting a serious play on Broadway. “It’s a suicidally bad way to resurrect his career,” Iñárritu says.

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