This year’s Oscars were touted to be a Birdman versus Boyhood race (though Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel , Morten Tyldum’s The Imitation Game and Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash got a rich haul of nominations too), largely because two much-loved art house favourites were up against each other for contrastingly different styles of storytelling. Birdman , a dark comedy on Hollywood, not surprisingly received its most highly regarded honour, named the Best Picture and taking three other Oscars with it. If Boyhood was the framing of a sequence of observational moments from life pieced together over 12 years in a naturalistic, organic, what-you-see-is-what-you-get realistic narrative, Birdman was conceived as a largely single-shot, seamless, open-to-interpretation, layered narrative that is simultaneously real, theatrical and larger than life. Boyhood is a unique portrait of character, the most intimate coming-of-age film ever made. It uses the premise to subtly explore the small little changes that go into the loss of innocence. It is a bittersweet film that has now attained a stronger cult status after its loss to Birdman . Someday, it will officially be seen as a prequel to the filmmaker’s Before Sunrise , Before Sunset and Before Midnight films as the story of a boy who becomes his father, sensitively played by Ethan Hawke.
Birdman is a phenomenal film and its win is an even more significant triumph for comedy as a legitimate high art form and because it marks a return to the basics of filmmaking – seamless storytelling, powerhouse performances, great writing and terrific use of background score – during times when mainstream cinema is moving closer towards visual-effects-aided spectacles celebrating comic books and pornography, as the film suggests. Inarritu made a film that dared to criticise this trend, took an unflinching look at art, commerce, ego, validation, life and death and showed Hollywood a mirror. This was a vision so meticulously crafted and powerfully realised that it was virtually editor-proof ( Birdman understandably did not get a nomination for Best Editing because it was seen as one long continuous shot). The fact that Boyhood , a low-stakes indie experiment done on a part-time basis, emerged as the strongest Oscar contender against one of the most wonderfully crafted, breathlessly beautiful and intellectually rich films of our times is a win by itself, not a mere loss. It is not surprising that the sixty-something Academy voters related more to a man looking back at his life than a boy looking forward to it. The films are not very different, after all. You know there’s a Birdman in Boyhood when the father tells the son: “We’re all just winging it, you know? The good news is you’re feeling stuff.”