Everything about the Best Picture win for Birdman was a little odd. I’m not one of those people who hated the film – in fact I thought it was great. But the whole weird round-robin guyfest on the acceptance stage gave me a bit of a stomach ache.
First of all, the ‘special guest' who was promised to present best picture was…Sean Penn? In our viewing before he came out, we were throwing around ideas like Stephen Hawking, or remembering when it was Michelle Obama a couple of years back. Sean Penn is, how to put this...
Anticlimactic as hell.
Maybe then he felt he needed to justify his existence by being a dick so he made the comment about ‘who gave this guy a green card’. Now listen, I know they’ve worked together, years ago on 21 Grams. That doesn’t mean a noted curmudgeon can’t make a dicklike comment. It didn’t sound like they were buddies. It sounded like Sean Penn being pricky.
Then in turn Inarritu turns to Keaton to have him speak on behalf of the film, justifiably of course, except for the part where I thought Keaton was still smarting from not having won. So it was a bit hollow. The whole thing just felt kind of raw and emotions-all-over-the-place and I’m-so-glad-we’re-bros but maybe with less of a bro feeling than you might expect. Just me?
