Birdman soars to great heights

In a role that has been called "the comeback of the century" (with justification), Michael Keaton plays not one but two characters, a washed-up former star of a blockbuster franchise who's trying to revive his career by putting on a play and his big-screen alter ego, a foul-mouthed, feathered superhero named Birdman.

Late in the movie, director Alejandro Inarritu lets Birdman out his cage, that is, the embattled subconscious of Keaton's Riggan Thomson, and all of a sudden this low-budget art movie shot largely in the confines of a Broadway theatre morphs into an eye-popping CGI action extravaganza replete with a winged monster terrorising Manhattan ("Good old apocalyptic porn," screeches Birdman).

But for most of the movie Birdman is a haranguing voice in the ear of the embattled Riggan, reminding him of his god-like status as a Hollywood big shot and urging him to forget the mortals collaborating with him on the play, an adaptation of a short story by Raymond Carver.

"So you're not a great actor. Who cares? You're much more than that," Birdman growls. "You tower over all these theatre douchebags. You're a movie star! A global force! Don't you get it? You spend your whole life building a bank account and a reputation and now they're blown."

Birdman has been justly celebrated as a freewheeling Fellini-esque backstage satire in which Inarritu and his genius cinematographer and fellow Mexican Emmanuel Lubezki create the impression of controlled chaos and a waking nightmare by using a single take throughout the entire film, a sleight of hand as astonishing as anything you'd see in the mega-budget blockbusters the film sends up.

However, this soaring, mesmerising, thought-provoking movie is grounded in a series of intriguing debates that have long preoccupied Hollywood types - artifice versus reality, celebrity versus seriousness, money and power versus talent and truth, high culture versus popular culture.

These arguments are made universal because they're wrapped in a comedy about an actor not just trying to kickstart his stalled career but a man struggling with a serious midlife crisis. His social- media-savvy daughter-assistant (Emma Stone) berates him for being out of touch, his actress girlfriend (Andrea Riseborough) tells him she's pregnant, and he's lost so much hair he has to wear a wig on stage.

While this beautifully crafted movie is alive with ideas - there's barely a confrontation in which Inarritu and his team of writers don't hammer out the issue of artistic integrity in a sensation- obsessed world - Birdman is also extremely funny, an old-style showbiz satire in which tempers fray and egos shred in the helter- skelter charge to opening night.

When a light crashes on to the head of one of the actors in his play - he's so rotten that Riggan wonders if his alter ego Birdman used his superpowers to get rid of him - one of Riggan's actors (Naomi Watts) suggests as a replacement her boyfriend and Broadway legend Mike Shiner (Ed Norton), whose ability is surpassed only by his arrogance.

Mike's genius lifts the spirits of Riggan and his manager-producer (Zach Galifianakis) who fear a disaster. He knows the script by heart and brings a realism and force that recall the Method greats who once graced the very theatre they are using (as this most aggravating of theatre purists likes to remind everyone).

However, Mike's so committed to truth that during one of the preview performances he goes nuts when he realises that Riggan has replaced with water the gin he was drinking on stage to get into the spirit of the notorious alcoholic Carver, tearing apart the set and berating the audience ("Don't look at the world through your cell-phone screens. Have a real experience!").

Art and life collapse completely when one night after the stage door closes on Riggan after he steps out for a smoke during the production, leaving him dashing through bustling Times Square in his underpants and pursued by autograph-hunting tourists. It is a filmmaking tour de force and leaves you in awe.

There is also room for poignancy and beauty. When Riggan does get a chance to act in the play he's written and is directing he reveals he's more than just a joker in a superhero outfit, as Michael Keaton is reminding people decades after shucking off the Batman costume he is an actor of remarkable range.

While the powerful critic who intends to destroy Riggan's play even though she hasn't seen it - he is a spoiled Hollywood airhead and a symbol of all she despises - Keaton himself turns in a stellar performance, giving us no less than three fully rounded characters (including his character in the play) and nailing the anguish and despair of an artist who, like Icarus, flew too close to the Sun, burning up on his way back to Earth.

Ironically, it took Oscar frontrunner Keaton many years flying under the radar to now touch the sky.

While this beautifully crafted movie is alive with ideas Birdman is also extremely funny, an old-style showbiz satire.