MANILA, Philippines - This year’s frontrunner at the Oscars, Birdman will open at Ayala Malls Cinemas on Jan. 28 and has thus far dominated the Academy Awards with nine nominations in major categories including Best Picture. Other notable nominations for Birdman include Best Director (Alejandro González Iñárritu), Best Actor (Michael Keaton), Best Supporting Actor (Edward Norton), Best Supporting Actress (Emma Stone), Best Cinematography, Best Original Screenplay, Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing.
In Birdman, Iñárritu’s black comedy, Riggan Thomson (Keaton) hopes that by spearheading an ambitious new Broadway play he will, among other things, revive his moribund career. In many ways, it is a deeply foolhardy move — but the former cinema superhero has high hopes that this creative gambit will legitimize him as an artist and prove to everyone — and himself — that he is not just a Hollywood has-been.
With the play’s opening night looming, Riggan’s lead actor is injured by a freak accident during rehearsals and needs to be replaced quickly. At the suggestion of lead actress Lesley (Naomi Watts) and the urging of his best friend and producer Jake (Zach Galifianakis), Riggan reluctantly hires Mike Shiner (Norton) — a loose cannon who is guaranteed to sell tickets and get the play a rave review. As he preps for the stage debut, he must deal with his girlfriend and co-star Laura (Andrea Riseborough), his fresh-from-rehab daughter and personal assistant Sam (Stone), as well as his ex-wife Sylvia (Amy Ryan), who appears every so often to check-in with the intent to stabilize things.
“Riggan is profoundly human,” Iñárritu says. “I saw him as a kind of Don Quixote, where the humor comes from the disparity and permanent dislocation of his solemn ambitions and the ignoble reality that surrounds him. Basically, it’s the story of all of us.”
Of this generation’s most admired women, Stone plays Sam, Riggan’s daughter, newly sprung from rehab and working as her father’s assistant. Their relationship is strained — his onetime fame as the super hero Birdman meant that he was absent for much of her youth. Hiring her as his aide doesn’t do much to improve their situation. Sam has a keen eye and observes her father and the histrionics that come with his play with wry dispassion that is spot-on but also a bit of a defense mechanism.
She says: “Because she is fresh out of rehab, I assume he needs to be watched by a family member. So she makes a huge mistake by working for him. So it doesn’t begin well but by the end, she starts to see that they are very similar.”
She had a supportive guide in Iñárritu. “I learned so much. It was so exciting to live and breathe the character for the entire length of the scene. And Alejandro is so tuned into actors. There was a day when I knew it just wasn’t working for me and suddenly I could feel it kick in and as I did, he clapped and said, ‘That’s it!’ It’s amazing. I’ve never met a director who could do that, he feels what you do,” Stone says.