Sample Movie Review On Birdman

The movie “Birdman”, filmed by the Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu in 2014, created a furor in the cinematography. This film uses a lot of unusual cinematic techniques, which we are going to analyze in our paper.
     Let us start with the camera work done by Emmanuel Lubezki, who used quite interesting techniques when shooting. First of all, you need to say about the angles of the shots. Emmanuel Lubezki filmed shots from low angles. These pictures give the impression that the subject is of great importance, and has certain strength. These shots make the viewers feel their insignificance. And to the fore are coming the main characters and their game. They manipulate the viewers, revealing their talent in all its glory.
     In addition, it is worth noting the speed of the frame movement. Speed ​​of movement of a film is determining by longevity of film copies, while the most appropriate is at a frequency of 24 frames per second. To slow down or speed up the movement on the screen, there is acceleration and deceleration of the shooting. Filming with a frame rate that is different from the standard allows you to monitor the on-screen process, invisible to the eye, or brings extra artistic effect to a movie. In the film “Birdman”, some shots are taken with a certain acceleration, which is not visible to the viewer, but this acceleration gives its special effect to the film.
Also, the film uses such an effect as "depth of field". As any optical device, a camera possesses the concept of the focal length. Those objects, which are located at equal distance from the camera, appear sharp, while outside this range the objects appear blurred. It is used for the next concentration solely on the characters’ faces, while the rest of the entourage in the background is blurred almost throughout the film.
 It is necessary to say a few words about the work done in the film in terms of coloristic. It is hardly noticeable that the film almost did not use artificial colors. Almost all the frames are original, they have no improvements or blending with bright colors. On the contrary, the colorist in "Birdman" diminished tone, so that the film was more gloomy, as the life of the protagonist.
     In the movie "Birdmen" as in any other editing there were used several types of montage: rough cut, assembly cut, director's cut, editor's cut and of course the final cut. But the peculiarity of the cut in this film lies in its lightness, since the entire film was shot in long takes, for 10-15 minutes, which is a kind of a record. In so many takes, almost nobody films the movies today. Respectively, when “gluing” the shots while editing, the material was not so much and it simplified a task to both Douglas Crise and Stephen Mirrione, who were engaged directly in gluing the footage together.
     As for the lighting, used in the film, there are two species involved, while the lateral (side) illumination is dominant, when light falls on the side of the actors.
Such light casts sharp shadows on the subject and creates a dramatic contrast between light and shadow. However, back lighting is also used. It can be seen for a fair amount of time in the film, since this light shadows fall on the actors’ face and is very clearly visible to the viewer. The film also has a lot of windows in frames, and it is possible to often use natural light in a scene.
     If we talk about the proximity of the characters in the picture, there is close up used almost everywhere. It indicates the location of the camera, in which most of the frame takes a person's face. Close-up focuses the viewer's attention on a particular character and his experiences.
     The film used “Steadicam” with a light dolly, not requiring lying rails. This camera is used to stabilize the frame, in order the camera not to be shaking and not to create any side effects. When the camera is stable as much as possible, the whole attention focuses on the definition of performance by actors of their work, on the details, facial expressions and so on. Therefore, this creates additional difficulties for actors, who should show the maximum of their capacity at this shooting.
     The film contrasts the many different issues, such as, Mortality against Immortality. The protagonist thinks that his character "Birdman" is immortal, but realizes that he is not. Also it is about Real vs. Surreal. In the film, there is more prevalent surrealism in all its forms, which is in constant struggle with the reality.
     "Birdman" perfectly combined comedy and drama. It is about a drama of a human, who is trying to say something about himself, leave the world some significant mark or do something significant. It is about a crisis of identity, self-determination as an adult. But all of this would be too sad and dramatic, if there were no comedy scenes, jokes, interesting conversations, so harmoniously blended in the film is a satirical drama, which is recently not so much. The ending is very unusual, as it leaves more questions than answers. At the end, each says to himself: “I do not understand what happened to him, but maybe he was just living my dream”.