Nyff 2014

[Chris Knipp]

Alejandro G. Iñárritu: Birdman, or (The Unexpected Virtues of Ignorance) ( 2014)

The Closing Night film, a tour de force and a complete change of pace for the Mexican director, again as in GRAVITY working in English with an American cast. Still overly ambitious, maybe, but the heavy-handed "significance" of 21 GRAMS, BABEL and BIUTIFUL is gone in favor of humor and satire and the main actors, Michael Keaton and Edward Norton, had great fun with this material. Another of the New York Film Festival's many "New York movies" this year, shot almost entirely at the St. James Theater on 44th and Broadway, from whence Keaton wanders through Times Square clad only in his skivvies followed by the director's virtuoso dp Emmanuel Lubezki in one more of the film's seamless long takes accompanied by the beat of drums, a sequence that clinced my feeling this was somehow similar to Leos Carax's mind-bending HOLY MOTORS (NYFF 2012).