Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography. Nominated for Best Actor,

BestSupportingActorBestSupportingActressBestSoundMixingBestSoundEditingVeniceGoldenLionBritishAcademyBestPictureChicagoBestPictureGoldenGlobesBestPicture…

A lot of ‘Best’s appear on this list of accolades for Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). A total of 397 awards and nominations major enough to have Wikipedia articles. There’s a very simple reason for that; Birdman is really, really good. González Iñárritu, best known for his past critically-acclaimed films Biutiful and Babel, has created an engrossing, hilarious, and masterfully made production based on the story of Riggan Thomson, a washed-up movie star now looking to revitalize his career by doing a Broadway play while trying to escape the burden of his superhero-playing past. Thomson is played by the stupendous Michael Keaton, and the raw talent of Emma Stone and Edward Norton make for a trio that brings the darker side of this comedy to the fore. Explosive sucker punches of emotion pepper this film, contrasting with the minimalist soundtrack of Antonio Sánchez’s jazzy drum beat. Layers of storyline gradually build up as the initial, glossy layer of lightheartedness is agonizingly peeled away.

Most of the movie appears to be filmed in one shot, a brilliantly innovate technique that truly brings out the best of the actors’ potential and ensures that the audience sees everything as it’s happening, feeling that everything is exposed and nothing of this raw story can be disguised through clever cinematic trickery. It brings on the feeling that this is more than a film; it’s an insight into a small world that González Iñárritu and the host of brilliantly talented actors in this film have given us, the lucky viewer. Movies like this endure, partly because any film that brings the audience into the story as much as this one is destined to, but mostly because excellence is timeless, and this film certainly fits that description.

I’d say the essence, the soul, of the movie is pretty well represented by the final scene, where Keaton pictures himself flying through New York without a care, a small man in a big world. And this really is what Birdman is about. It’s happy doing its own thing, and what a funny, wonderful thing it does.