Dazzling and imaginative, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's tour de force soars because this time around, he's less of a moralizer and much more of a philosopher. Inarritu employs every visual trick in his repertoire (the film's signature is that it seems unedited) but enjoyably employs them in the service of a fable set in a Broadway theater. The result feels refreshingly immediate, urgent; in such a setting, the questions asked feel worthwhile. What's really interesting is that the questions themselves deal with a topic specific to a target (read: educated) audience. Inarritu and his collaborators (writers Nicolas Glacobone, Alexander Dinelaris and Armando Bo) concern themselves with art and all sorts of questions related to it: why is it made, who is it being made for, how does it relate to the the individual as well as the collective? Michael Keaton, wonderful in a performance imbued with a gravitas he seldom draws upon, plays an action-movie actor attempting redemption by directing, starring and adapting Raymond Carver for the stage; in order to realize his vision, he must run a harrowing gauntlet consisting of an antagonistic, preening actor (Edward Norton, loads of fun), a relationship with a co-star (Andrea Riseborough), a daughter fresh out of rehab (Emma Stone) and a critic hell-bent on destroying him (Lindsay Duncan). Inarritu works with a magical realism (Keaton is able to use telekinesis to manipulate his surroundings and is responsible for some of the stresses that befall him) but the film, taking place as it does in a familiar setting, seems grounded throughout even when the open-ended (yet fulfilling) conclusion is just as magical; rather than the clean resolutions that restored the world in "Babel", here it's the individual, alone and detached from every surrounding antagonist, that makes a messy breakthrough and the result speaks to every member of the viewing audience. Entertaining and accessible but also rigorous, it's about time a film played to an engaged audience and not only to the multiplex masses. Kudos to Antonio Sanchez' brilliant drum score, which continuously yet subtly comments on the film's content.
